Of  this  book  there  have  been  printed  three  hundred 
copies  from  type  and  original  wood  blocks  on 
French  hand-made  paper,  and  three  copies 
on  Roman  parchment,  by  order  of  the 
Committee  on  Publications  of  The 
Grolier  Club  of  the  City  of 
New  York,  November, 
Nineteen  Hundred 
and  Twelve 


THE  WRITERS 
OF  KNICKERBOCKER 
NEW  YORK 


THE  WRITERS 
OF  KNICKERBOCKER 
NEW  YORK 

BY 

HAMILTON  WRIGHT  MABIE 


ILLUSTRATIONS  ENGRAVED  BY 
\V  \L WORTH  STILSON 


THE  GROLIER  CLUB 
OF  THE  CITY  OF  NEW  YORK 
1912 


20$ 


Copyright,  1912,  by 
The  Orolier  Club  of  the 
City  of  New  York 


LIST  OF  WOODCUTS 


Device  of  the  Gbolieh  Club  Title-page 

PAGE 

Tail-Piece  viii 

"  From  Bowling  Green  to  Trinity  Church." 

1  Head-Band  3 

"  New  York  has  grown  by  the  process  of 
destruction,  and  has  become  metropolitan 
through  successive  stages  of  self-efface- 
ment." 

2  Tail-Piece  28 

"And  there  was  a  bridge  on  the  Boston  Post 
Road  .  .  .  which  bore  the  suggestive  name 
of  the  Kissing-bridge." 

3  Head-Band  29 

"The  old  Government  House." 

4  Tall-Piece  51 

"The  old-fashioned  gentleman  who  was  last 
seen  on  the  Albany  Post  Road." 

5  Head-Band  52 

"Celebrated  in  the  'Salmagundi'  papers  as 
Cockloft  Hall." 

6  Tail-Piece  67 

"  Sitting  .  .  .  overlooking  the  river  .  .  .  the 
old  man  delighted  to  recall  the  golden 
Knickerbocker  age." 

Tii 


LIST  OF  WOODCUTS 


7  Head-Band 


PAGE 

68 


'Whose  distinction  was  invariably  expressed 
in  a  preen  or  common,  a  Congregational  spire, 
an  academy,  and  rows  of  graceful  elms." 


8  Tail-Piece 


"  Let  it  be  taken  from  the  top  of  Wechawk 
Hill,  overlooking  New  York." 


88 


89 


9  Head-Band  

"  In  the  back  room  of  Wiley's  shop  .  .  .  Dana 
met  Cooper,  Halleck,  Brevoort." 

10  Tail-Piece  121 

"  Lines  to  a  water-fowl." 


VA.W,  BCbn' 


THE  WRITERS 
OF  KNICKERBOCKER 
NEW  YORK 


KNICKERBOCKER 
NEW  YORK 

In  these  days,  when  New  York  has  be- 
come a  metropolitan  city  with  a  popu- 
lation of  four  million  souls,  and  the  old 
city  has  shrunk  politically  into  the 
Borough  of  Manhattan,  it  is  not  easy 
to  recall  the  obliterated  outlines  of  the 
Town  which  was  satirized  by  the  viva- 
3 


4  THE  WRITERS  OF 

cious  young  men  who  wrote  the  "Sal- 
magundi" papers.  Unlike  Rome,  which 
has  been  rebuilt  half  a  dozen  times  on 
its  early  site  and  largely  out  of  its  old 
materials,  so  that  the  city  of  to-day  is 
a  kind  of  palimpsest  in  stone,  brick,  and 
mortar,  New  York  has  grown  by  the 
process  of  destruction,  and  has  become 
metropolitan  through  successive  stages 
of  self-effacement.  Here  and  there  one 
comes  upon  a  building  which  has  sur- 
vived from  the  late  colonial  period,  but 
no  structure  now  standing  bears  witness 
to  the  taste  or  lack  of  taste  of  the 
Dutch  settlers,  and  the  streets  preserve 
no  traces  of  the  old  lanes  and  highways 
save  an  occasional  name  as  misleading 
descriptively  as  the  Bowery.  Canal 
Street  is  as  stolid  a  reminiscence  of  a 
water-channel  as  is  the  heavy  warehouse 
frontage  of  Grub  Street  of  the  humor- 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  5 

ous  or  tragic  traditions  of  literary 
Bohemia  in  the  days  of  Mr.  Pope  and 
Dr.  Johnson.  New  York  has  changed 
its  form  almost  as  often  as,  according  to 
the  physiologists,  men  change  their 
bodies.  It  has  kept  certain  character- 
istics which  marked  its  youth  and  pre- 
dicted the  traits  of  its  maturity ;  but 
its  growth  has  been  so  great  that  the 
divergencies  between  the  latest  and  the 
earliest  city  seem  to  be  differences  in 
kind  rather  than  in  degree. 

The  New  York  in  which  Washington 
Irving  was  born  in  April,  1783,  was  still 
in  the  possession  of  British  troops,  who 
withdrew  six  months  later,  leaving  a 
half-ruined  city  behind  them.  The 
population  had  been  reduced  from 
twenty  thousand  to  ten  thousand ;  ship- 
ping had  deserted  the  captive  town,  and 
the  wharves  were  rotting  from  disuse ; 


6  THE  WRITERS  OF 

streets  which  had  been  opened  before 
the  war  to  afford  room  for  growth  were 
desolate  and  forlorn,  with  that  over- 
growth of  straggling  weeds  which  is  the 
final  evidence  of  neglect.  Many  public 
and  private  buildings  which  had  been 
used  for  military  purposes  were  falling 
in  ruins.  The  great  fire  of  September, 
1776,  had  left  a  large  part  of  the  west- 
ern side  of  the  little  city  a  mass  of  ruins  ; 
and  Broadway  from  Bowling  Green  to 
Trinity  Church  was  a  dreary  waste  of 
blackened  walls  and  heaps  of  rubbish. 
There  was  no  money  in  the  city  treas- 
ury, and  the  once  growing  town  was  ap- 
parently blighted.  Other  cities  had 
been  more  active  in  the  struggle  for  in- 
dependence; none  had  suffered  more 
severely  from  the  devastation  of  war. 

"In  June,  1787,"  wrote  Samuel 
Breck,  "on  my  return  from  a  residence 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  7 

of  a  few  years  in  France,  I  arrived  at 
that  city  [New  York]  and  found  it  a 
neglected  place,  built  chiefly  of  wood, 
and  in  a  state  of  prostration  and  decay. 
A  dozen  vessels  in  port;  Broadway, 
from  Trinity  Church,  inclusive,  down  to 
the  Battery,  in  ruins,  owing  to  a  fire 
that  had  occurred  when  the  city  was 
occupied  by  the  enemy  during  the  later 
part  of  the  war — the  ruined  walls  of  the 
houses  standing  on  both  sides  of  the 
way  testifying  to  the  poverty  of  the 
place  five  years  after  the  conflagration ; 
for  although  the  war  had  ceased  during 
that  period,  and  the  enemy  had  de- 
parted, no  attempt  had  been  made  to 
rebuild  them.  In  short,  there  was  si- 
lence and  inactivity  everywhere."  Mr. 
Breck  was  mistaken  about  the  date  of 
the  fire,  but  his  description  of  the  deso- 
late city  was  accurate. 


8 


THE  WRITERS  OF 


In  these  depressing  conditions,  New 
York  did  not  give  itself  up  to  gloomy 
misgivings ;  it  had  always  been  a  cheer- 
ful, social  community,  and  it  was  not 
long  in  recovering  its  prosperity  and 
high  spirits.  Six  years  after  the  close 
of  the  war  it  was  the  Capital  of  the 
United  States,  the  population  had 
more  than  doubled,  ships  were  in  the 
harbor,  grass  no  longer  gave  the  streets 
a  rustic  aspect,  and  the  tide  of  activity 
had  reached  the  highest  point  in  its 
history.  There  were  nearly  twenty-four 
thousand  people  living  south  of  Reade 
Street  on  the  west,  and  of  Pike  Street 
on  the  east;  a  swamp  arrested  the 
growth  of  the  town  along  the  East 
River.  There  were  about  twenty- 
four  hundred  slaves.  The  houses  were 
mainly  of  English  architecture,  though 
peaked  roofs   and  gable-ends  to  the 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  9 

streets  recalled  the  good  old  days  of 
Dutch  dominion,  when  a  canal  ran 
through  Broad  Street  and  broad- 
sterned  Dutch  vessels  lay  at  anchor  in 
the  centre  of  the  town. 

Politics  ran  high,  and  during  elec- 
tions language  was  used  with  far  less 
restraint  than  at  present.  The  first 
man  sent  to  Congress  from  New  York 
under  the  recently  adopted  national 
Constitution  was  Mr.  John  Lawrence, 
and  a  letter  published  in  the  "Daily 
Advertiser"  in  March,  1789,  contains 
the  following  frank  statement:  "Of  all 
the  men  who  framed  that  monarchical, 
aristocratical,  oligarchical,  tyrannical, 
diabolical  system  of  slavery,  the  New 
Constitution,  One  Half  were  lawyers. 
Of  the  men  who  represented,  or  rather 
misrepresented,  this  city  and  county  in 
the  late  convention  of  this  State,  to 


10  THE  WRITERS  OF 

whose  wicked  arts  we  may  safely  at- 
tribute the  adoption  of  that  diabolical 
system,  seven  out  of  the  lime  were  law- 
yers. .  .  .  And  what  crowns  the  wick- 
edness of  these  wicked  lawyers  is,  that 
a  great  majority  of  them  throughout 
the  State  are  violently  opposed  to  our 
good  and  great  head  and  never-failing 
friend  of  the  city  and  city  interests,  the 
present  governor. 

"Beware,  beware,  beware  of  Law- 
yers !" 

Very  pleasant  things  were  said  about 
the  New  York  of  1789  when,  at  the  end 
of  a  three  months'  session  of  the  United 
States  Congress,  it  was  announced  that 
only  one  member  had  been  ill.  After 
commenting  on  its  nearness  to  the  ocean 
and  the  sweetening  of  its  air  by  abun- 
dant verdure,  a  charming  picture  is 
evoked  by  the  statement  that  the  resi- 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  11 

dents  on  the  west  side  of  Broadway  are 
"saluted  by  fragrant  odors  from  the 
apple  orchards  and  buckwheat  fields  in 
blossom  on  the  pleasant  banks  of  the 
Jersey  shore." 

The  little  city  was  already  charged 
with  extravagance  and  frivolity,  and 
the  details  of  these  offences  are  not  lack- 
ing. One  reads  of  blue  satin  gowns 
with  white  satin  petticoats,  large  Ital- 
ian gauze  handkerchiefs  with  satin 
border  stripes  worn  about  the  neck, 
completed  by  a  head-dress  of  "pouf  of 
gauze  in  the  form  of  a  globe,  the  head- 
piece of  which  was  made  of  white  satin 
having  a  double  wing,  in  large  plaits, 
and  trimmed  with  a  large  wreath  of  arti- 
ficial roses."  There  were  shoes  of  blue 
satin  adorned  by  rose-colored  rosettes, 
and  muffs  of  wolfskin  with  knots  of 
scarlet  ribbon.    The  gentlemen  of  the 


12  THE  WRITERS  OF 

period  were  arrayed  with  equal  splen- 
dor :  bottle-green,  pearl,  scarlet,  purple, 
mulberry,  and  garnet  were  among  the 
colors  of  cloths  advertised  by  a  local 
tailor  on  Hanover  Square;  while  waist- 
coats fairly  glowed  with  brilliant  hues 
and  brocaded  and  spangled  buttons. 
Beaver  and  castor  hats  were  in  vogue, 
and  superior  boots  were  made  by  Mr. 
Thomas  Garner,  of  Pearl  Street,  whose 
proud  claim  to  the  patronage  of  the 
fashionable  was  that  he  had  worked  for 
the  first  nobility  in  England.  It  cost 
approximately  seventy-five  dollars  to 
dress  a  lady's  hair  every  day  in  the 
year ;  and  there  were  dentists  who  pulled 
the  teeth  of  the  poor  gratis  between  the 
hours  of  six  and  nine  on  the  mornings  of 
Monday  and  Thursday.  The  sociability 
and  hospitality  of  the  city  made  a  deep 
impression  on  Noah  Webster,  who  was 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  13 

also  struck  by  the  absence  of  affectation 
and  of  social  snobbery. 

Lectures  appear  to  have  been  few  in 
number  and  serious  in  theme;  the  city, 
which  took  its  pleasures  comfortably, 
took  its  opportunities  of  enlightenment 
sparingly  and  in  a  heroic  temper.  There 
appears  to  have  been  but  one  candidate 
on  the  lecture  platform  for  public  ap- 
proval in  this  field  during  the  winter  of 
1789,  and  he  is  described  as  "a  man 
more  than  thirty  years  an  Atheist."  The 
lecture  was  delivered  at  Aaron  Aorson's 
tavern,  and  tickets  were  to  be  had  from 
the  Aldermen ! 

The  play  enjoyed  greater  popular 
favor,  but  the  John  Street  Theatre  was 
without  competition  until  1798,  when 
the  Old  Park  Theatre  was  opened.  Dur- 
ing the  season  of  1789,  William  Dunlap 
put  several  home-made  American  dra- 


14  THE  WRITERS  OF 

mas  on  the  stage.  He  was  the  prolific 
author  of  forty-nine  plays,  which  stand 
to  the  credit  of  his  industry  if  not  of 
his  genius.  These  dramas  were  the 
premature  births  of  the  Genius  of  the 
American  stage,  and  none  of  them  sur- 
vives. They  were  very  faint  prophecies 
of  the  interesting  dramatic  movement 
now  in  progress ;  but  one  of  them, 
"Darby's  Return,"  achieved  the  rare 
distinction  of  evoking  a  laugh  from 
Washington — an  occurrence  so  unusual 
that  it  stimulated  a  writer  in  the  "Daily 
Advertiser"  to  report  it  in  the  most 
stately  English:  "Our  Adored  Ruler 
seemed  to  unbend  and  for  the  moment 
give  himself  to  the  pleasures  arising 
from  the  gratifications  of  the  two  most 
noble  organs  of  sense,  the  Eye  and  the 
Ear!" 

The  Musical  Society  gave  an  occa- 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  15 

sional  recital,  and  there  were  subscrip- 
tion concerts  under  the  management  of 
local  music-teachers.  The  young  gen- 
tlemen at  Columbia  College  were  deliv- 
ering Commencement  orations  "On  the 
Progress  and  Causes  of  Civilization" 
and  "On  the  Rising  Glory  of  America." 
There  were  nine  publishers  and  booksel- 
lers in  the  city,  and  in  the  year  of  Ir- 
ving's  birth  one  of  them  announced  "The 
First  American  Novel"  under  the  por- 
tentous title,  "The  Power  of  Sympathy ; 
or,  the  Triumph  of  Nature."  The  So- 
ciety Library,  disrupted  by  the  war, 
was  re-established,  and  a  circulating  li- 
brary organized.  William  Dunlap,  the 
playwright,  painted  portraits  and, 
later,  became  one  of  the  founders  of  the 
National  Academy  of  Design.  Mr. 
Edward  Savage  and  Mr.  Joseph  Wright 
followed  the  same  profession,  and  Wash- 


16  THE  WRITERS  OF 

ington  sat  for  all  three.  The  city  was 
kept  informed  of  events  by  five  news- 
papers ;  a  magazine  had  been  born  pre- 
maturely and  expired  after  a  brief  and 
unimportant  life.  The  journalistic 
style  of  the  day  was  of  an  eloquence  that 
is  happily  illustrated  by  a  description 
of  one  of  the  barges  which  escorted 
Washington  on  his  voyage  across  the 
bay  to  New  York  to  attend  his  inaugu- 
ration: "The  voices  of  the  ladies  were 
as  much  superior  to  the  flutes  that 
played  with  the  stroke  of  the  oars  in 
Cleopatra's  silken-corded  barge,  as  the 
very  superior  and  glorious  water  scene 
of  New  York  bay  exceeds  the  Cydnus  in 
all  its  pride." 

The  two-story  house  in  which  Irving 
was  born,  at  No.  131  William  Street, 
about  half-way  between  Fulton  and 
John  Streets,  was  pulled  down  ten  years 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  17 

before  his  death,  and  the  house  directly 
across  the  street,  in  which  he  spent  his 
childhood,  has  shared  its  fate.  The  lat- 
ter was  larger  and  afforded  greater 
facilities  for  boyish  gymnastics.  There 
were  front  and  rear  buildings  with  a 
narrow  structure  between  which  was 
hardly  more  than  a  passage,  and  it  was 
from  the  sloping  roof  at  the  rear  that 
Irving  made  his  perilous  descents  when 
he  set  out  to  enjoy  the  forbidden  pleas- 
ures of  the  John  Street  Theatre. 
George  William  Curtis  tells  a  delight- 
ful story  of  a  boy  in  Philadelphia,  whose 
father,  like  the  elder  Irving,  was  of  a 
very  serious  turn  of  mind,  and  who,  by 
way  of  youthful  reaction,  secretly  fre- 
quented the  forbidden  playhouse. 
"John,"  said  the  father,  "is  this  dread- 
ful thing  true  that  I  hear  of  thee?  Hast 
thou    been    to    see    the  play-actress 


18  THE  WRITERS  OF 

Frances  Kemble?"  "Yes,  father."  "I 
hope  thee  has  not  been  more  than  once, 
John."  "Yes,  father,"  was  the  honest 
if  somewhat  discouraging  answer; 
"more  than  thirty  times." 

The  easy-going  temper  of  the  metrop- 
olis to  which  Irving  was  to  give  a  last- 
ing expression  is  still  further  indicated 
by  the  story  that  in  order  to  escape  the 
rigid  requirements  of  his  father's  Pres- 
byterian faith  the  boy  had  himself  con- 
firmed in  Trinity  Church.  His  temper 
was  genial  and  kindly,  and  the  mingled 
sentiment  and  humor  which  were  to  give 
his  books  a  quality  American  writing 
had  so  far  lacked,  made  him  a  loiterer 
and  an  observer  rather  than  an  arduous 
and  methodical  student.  New  York  was 
the  gateway  to  the  beautiful  country  of 
Dutch  settlement  and  tradition  on  the 
banks  of  the  Hudson,  and  the  gun  and 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  19 

fishing-rod  were  the  instruments  of  ex- 
ploration with  which  the  boy  who  was 
to  write  "The  Legend  of  Sleepy  Hol- 
low" and  "Rip  Van  Winkle"  carried  his 
discoveries  into  the  heart  of  a  region  in 
which  it  was  always  afternoon.  He  had 
read  "Orlando  Furioso"  and  had  played 
the  knight  with  great  fire  and  gallantry 
in  the  back  yard  on  John  Street ;  he  had 
surreptitiously  saved  candle-ends  and 
read  the  moving  adventures  of  Sindbad 
and  Robinson  Crusoe  in  forbidden 
places  and  at  improper  hours,  and  the 
thirst  for  travel  was  on  him.  He  wan- 
dered about  the  pier-heads  when  he 
should  have  been  poring  over  text- 
books, and  watched  lessening  sails  with 
eager  desire  to  fare  with  them  to  the 
ends  of  the  earth.  He  was,  in  a  word, 
taking  that  course  in  romance,  adven- 
ture, and  dreaming  which  boys  of  his 


20  THE  WRITERS  OF 

temperament  and  genius  have  elected 
from  the  beginning  of  time,  to  the  sore 
but  fortunate  disappointment  of  their 
elders.  His  brothers  went  through 
Columbia  College,  but  he  went  up  the 
Hudson  and  discovered  to  the  imagi- 
nation the  river  which  Hudson  had 
discovered  to  the  eye.  Diedrich 
Knickerbocker  was  last  seen,  it  will  be 
remembered,  by  the  passengers  in  the 
stage  for  Albany ! 

The  literary  temperament  in  Irving 
was  not  without  the  confirmation  of  the 
literary  impulse,  and  while  he  was  still 
in  his  teens  he  began  to  try  his  hand  at 
social  satire,  a  form  of  literature  which 
is  practised  only  by  men  of  city  breed- 
ing and  interest.  In  the  "Morning 
Chronicle,"  of  which  his  brother  Peter 
was  editor  and  proprietor,  he  published, 
in  1802,  a  series  of  short  papers  dealing 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  21 

with  the  fashions  and  foibles  of  the  town 
after  the  manner  of  the  "Spectator"  and 
"Tatler,"  and  especially  with  the  man- 
ners of  the  actors  and  their  auditors. 
They  were  boyish  performances,  but 
they  showed  sensibility  and  humor,  and 
a  chivalrous  attitude  toward  women. 
Irving's  health,  which  had  been  uncer- 
tain, was  established  by  a  residence  of 
two  years  in  Europe,  where  he  saw 
countries  and  peoples  with  infinite  zest 
not  only  in  the  picturesque  Old  World 
but  in  the  range  and  variety  of  char- 
acter, the  broad  contrasts,  the  mingled 
tragedy  and  comedy  of  life  in  a  more 
highly  organized  society.  "I  am  a 
young  man  and  in  Paris,"  he  wrote  to  a 
friend  at  home,  and  he  was  happy  in  a 
wholesome  appetite  for  a  more  pictur- 
esque and  vivid  life  than  he  had  enjoyed 
in  the  little  provincial  city  at  the  mouth 


22  THE  WRITERS  OF 

of  the  Hudson.  When  he  returned  in 
1806  it  was  to  find  a  group  of  com- 
panions whose  knowledge  of  the  great 
world  was  less  than  his,  but  who  were 
equally  ready  for  work  or  for  mischief 
in  a  little  provincial  city  which  had 
developed  what  may  be  called  a  town- 
consciousness. 

It  was  still  bounded  on  the  north  by 
Anthony  and  Hester  Streets ;  Green- 
wich Village,  a  pleasant  suburban  vil- 
lage through  which  Christopher  Street 
now  passes,  was  a  place  of  refuge  from 
the  plague  for  families  fleeing  from  the 
city ;  the  State  prison  was  there,  and 
there  were  faint  streets  budding  in  the 
adjacent  farms.  Broome  Street  had 
been  laid  out;  Astor  Place  and  Green- 
wich Street,  Mr.  Jarvis  tells  us,  were 
lanes ;  the  latter  had  attained  the  dig- 
nity of  a  fashionable  drive,  and  opulent 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  23 

citizens  drove  out  to  Greenwich  Village 
on  pleasant  afternoons,  as  to-day  they 
motor  to  West  Point  or  Peekskill !  The 
seats  of  fashion  were  to  be  found  on  the 
Battery,  which  would  have  remained  the 
most  delightful  locality  for  residence  in 
New  York  if  the  people  of  the  metrop- 
olis had  not  conceived  a  repugnance  to 
living  in  near  proximity  to  business 
quarters.  Lower  Broadway,  Upper 
Pearl  and  Nassau  Streets  were  of  high 
respectability ;  and  Broadway  had  been 
paved  as  far  as  the  City  Hall.  Beyond 
lay  charming  country  roads,  occasional 
country  houses  to  which  the  leading 
families  retreated  from  the  summer 
heat,  and  thrifty  farms  whose  owners 
were  happily  ignorant  of  the  enormous 
future  values  of  their  fields. 

The  American  imagination,  which  has 
since  built  so  many  cities  over  night  in 


24  THE  WRITERS  OF 

the  newer  sections  of  the  country,  did 
not  slumber,  however,  even  in  a  city  in 
which  Dutch  reluctance  to  move  faster 
than  the  fact  was  so  large  a  factor,  and 
a  map  made  by  Mangin  in  1803  carries 
the  Boston  Road  far  north  through  a 
network  of  supposititious  streets  that 
lay  across  the  broad  fields  owned  by  Mr. 
Bayard,  Mr.  Rutgers,  Mr.  Lispenard, 
Mr.  De  Peyster,  and  other  well-known 
citizens,  and  obliterates  as  by  magic  the 
Swamp;  the  Collect,  or  fresh-water 
pond;  and  the  salt  meadows  of  the 
earlier  maps. 

The  Collect  was  not,  however,  so 
easily  dealt  with.  It  was  a  marsh  lying 
across  the  island  from  Roosevelt  Slip  to 
the  Hudson  at  what  is  now  the  foot  of 
Canal  Street.  The  focal  point  of  this 
marsh  was  a  pond  which  found  an  out- 
let through  the  Swamp  where  leather 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  25 

has  had  its  shrine  these  many  years,  and 
whence  the  first  Brooklyn  Bridge  takes 
its  flight  over  the  East  River.  The 
Swamp  had  been  drained  and  the  water 
from  the  pond  flowed  along  the  course 
of  the  present  Canal  Street;  but  the 
pond  was  still  to  be  disposed  of.  It  was 
very  deep  and  it  was  proposed  at  one 
time  to  connect  it  with  the  two  rivers  by 
canals,  which  would  have  made  New 
Amsterdam  reminiscent  of  old  Amster- 
dam ;  but  it  was  finally  filled  in  by  level- 
ing the  high  ground,  and  adventurous 
youths  and  maidens  who  had  been  ac- 
customed, on  pleasant  afternoons,  to 
venture  into  the  country  beyond  the 
City  Hall  lost  a  convenient  excuse  for 
Sabbath-day  excursions. 

It  is  amusing  to  find  a  pleasure-gar- 
den bearing  the  Old  World  name  of 
Ranelagh  oh  the  older  maps ;  and  Old 


26  THE  WRITERS  OF 

Vauxhall,  which  stood  originally  at  the 
corner  of  Warren  and  Greenwich  Streets 
in  a  house  built  by  Sir  Peter  Warren, 
was  also  a  public  garden,  patterned 
after  its  famous  original  in  London 
and  kept  by  Sam  Fraunces,  at  one  time 
a  steward  in  the  employ  of  Washington, 
and  whose  connection  with  the  old  tav- 
ern which  still  stands  ensures  his  name 
a  local  immortality.  Later  this  pleas- 
ure-ground covered  the  section  between 
Broadway  and  the  Bowery  of  which  the 
Astor  Library  was  the  centre.  The  chief 
cattle-market  was  on  the  Bowery  some- 
what south  of  the  garden.  There  were 
various  road-houses  along  the  East 
N  River  where  oysters  and  turtles  were 
cooked  with  great  skill.  Fishing  and 
water  parties  in  summer  and  sleighing 
parties  in  winter  found  the  best  of  fare 
in  these  houses,  with  their  pleasant 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  27 

grounds.  It  was  the  day  of  the  old- 
fashioned  chaise,  and  there  was  a  bridge 
on  the  Boston  Post  Road  at  about 
Third  Avenue  and  Seventy-seventh 
Street  which  bore  the  suggestive  name 
of  the  Kissing-bridge.  The  exaction 
of  this  kind  of  toll  appears  to  have 
been  widely  practised ;  not  only  bridges 
but  gates  and  stiles  were  penalized 
for  women.  The  Rev.  Mr.  Burnaby 
sagely  observed  that  this  custom  was 
"curious,  yet  not  displeasing."  New 
York  had  spread  out  since  Irving's 
birth,  but  it  was  still  a  neighborly  little 
city,  of  a  social  turn  and  disposed  to 
make  easy  terms  with  life. 

In  1809  Thomas  Paine  had  just  died 
in  Greenwich  Village,  at  what  is  now 
No.  293  Bleecker  Street,  where  he  was 
often  to  be  seen  at  the  open  window 
reading,  with  his  book  in  close  proxim- 


28  KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK 

ity  to  a  decanter  of  what  appeared  to 
be  brandy  or  rum.  It  is  reported  that 
two  clergymen  who  visited  him  with  the 
hope  of  changing  his  attitude  toward 
Christianity  were  abruptly  dismissed 
and  the  housekeeper  received  orders  to 
bar  the  door  against  such  visitors.  "If 
God  does  not  change  his  mind,  I 'm  sure 
no  human  can,"  was  her  sage  comment, 
and  the  author  of  "The  Age  of  Reason" 
was  troubled  no  more. 


After  a  stormy  passage  of  sixty-four 
days,  not  lacking  in  serious  perils, 
Irving  landed  in  New  York  in  the  wake 
of  a  heavy  snowstorm  in  February, 
1806,  in  high  spirits  and  ready  for  such 
pleasures  as  the  little  town  afforded.  One 
of  his  biographers  has  described  it  as 
a  "handy"  city ;  it  was  large  enough  to 
furnish  ample  variety  of  character 
studies  and  many  opportunities  for 
good-fellowship  of  an  intimate,  easy- 
going sort;  there  was  an  air  of  con- 
viviality about  the  place,  but  there  was 
29 


30  THE  WRITERS  OF 

little  serious  dissipation.  It  was  a  very 
pleasant  moment  in  the  growth  of  the 
metropolis  which  had  become,  in  a  quiet, 
provincial  way,  a  town  in  the  special 
sense  in  which  that  word  connotes  a 
group  of  people  numerous  enough  to 
constitute  a  society,  fond  of  the  same 
pleasures,  interested  in  local  incidents 
and  amusements,  sufficiently  intimate  to 
have  formed  a  code  of  social  standards 
and  manners.  In  a  word,  in  the  New 
York  of  Irving's  early  maturity,  as  in 
the  London  of  the  time  of  Steele  and 
Addison,  there  was  an  organized  so- 
ciety, open  to  clever  portraiture  and 
brisk  satire;  supplying  at  the  same 
time  the  material  and  the  audience  for 
local  wit  and  humor.  It  was  easy  to 
know  everybody  in  the  society  of  the 
town,  and  easy  to  get  about  the  place. 
The  tone  was  not  intellectual,  though 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  31 

the  city  never  lacked  men  and  women 
of  distinguished  ability  and  social  cul- 
tivation. It  was  a  well-bred  and  hos- 
pitable society,  with  a  keen  relish  for 
pleasure.  There  were  numberless  din- 
ners and  suppers,  much  less  costly  and 
elaborate  than  those  of  to-day,  and 
more  informal  and  merry.  The  country 
was  convivial  in  all  sections  outside  New 
England,  and  the  social  use  of  wine  was 
over-generous.  In  America,  as  in  Eng- 
land, getting  under  the  table  was  an  in- 
discretion, not  a  fault.  One  of  Irving's 
friends  reported  that,  after  a  festive 
occasion,  he  had  fallen  through  an  open 
grating  on  his  homeward  way  and  was 
disposed  to  feel  very  much  depressed  by 
the  darkness  and  solitude ;  but,  one  after 
another,  several  fellow-guests  joined 
him  in  the  same  manner,  and  the  hilarity 
was  prolonged  until  dawn. 


32  THE  WRITERS  OF 

Like  many  other  young  men  whose 
ultimate  good  or  evil  fortune  it  was  to 
write  books,  Irving  was  admitted  to  the 
bar  at  about  the  same  time  that  the 
sign,  "William  Cullen  Bryant,  attorney 
and  counsellor  at  Law,"  appeared  in  the 
little  village  of  Cummington  in  western 
Massachusetts.  In  after  years  his  esti- 
mate of  his  legal  acquirements  was  indi- 
cated by  his  quoting  the  comments  of 
two  well-known  lawyers  who  were  exam- 
ining students  for  admission  to  practise 
law.  "Martin,"  said  one  of  these  exam- 
iners, referring  to  an  aspirant  who  had 
acquitted  himself  very  lamely — "Mar- 
tin, I  think  he  knows  a  little  law." 
"Make  it  stronger,"  was  the  reply ; 
"damned  little."  Irving  had  loitered 
and  dreamed  on  the  water-front  as  a  boy 
when  he  ought  to  have  been  at  his 
books ;  and  now,  at  the  gateway  of  his 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  33 

career,  the  literary  temperament  turned 
him  toward  congenial  fellowship  rather 
than  arduous  study.  There  was  plenty 
of  material  for  comradeship  in  the  town, 
and  young  men  of  spirit  instinctively 
gathered  about  him.  It  was  a  very 
kindly  and  wholesome  Bohemia  in  which 
they  disported  themselves  in  the  halcyon 
days  of  a  fleeting  youth.  They  re- 
garded themselves  as  "men  about  town" 
of  the  deepest  dye,  but  it  was  a  very 
innocent  town  in  which  they  amused 
themselves,  and  they  all  bore  honorable 
names  in  later  and  more  serious  years. 

Henry  Ogden,  Henry  Brevoort, 
James  K.  Paulding,  John  and  Gouv- 
erneur  Kemble,  Peter  and  Washington 
Irving,  the  leaders  of  this  vivacious 
company,  were  members  of  families  who 
had  long  been  foremost  in  the  social  life 
of  the  city,  and  they  were  far  from 


34  THE  WRITERS  OF 

being  the  "roistering  blades"  they 
fondly  thought  themselves  to  be.  They 
were  young  men  of  spirit,  generous 
tastes,  and  no  little  cultivation.  They 
combined  with  great  success  devotion  to 
literature  and  social  activity.  Irving 
speaks  of  himself  as  "a  champion  at  the 
tea-parties,"  and  the  "nine  worthies," 
or  "lads  of  Kilkenny,"  as  he  called 
them,  shone  in  the  society  of  what  was 
then  known  as  "the  gentler  sex"  no  less 
than  on  the  festive  occasions  when  they 
celebrated  their  youth  in  private  rev- 
els. The  old  country  house  built  by 
Nicholas  Gouverneur,  from  whom  it  had 
descended  to  Gouverneur  Kemble,  was 
the  favorite  out-of-town  haunt  of  these 
lively  youths.  It  had  a  pleasant  site  on 
the  banks  of  the  Passaic  not  far  from 
Newark,  and  is  celebrated  in  the  "Sal- 
magundi" papers  as  Cockloft  Hall.  An 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  85 

old-time  air  hung  about  the  place,  with 
its  antique  furniture  and  generous  en- 
dowment of  family  portraits.  It  was 
cared  for  by  two  old  servants  of  long 
standing  in  the  family,  and  a  negro  boy, 
and  it  afforded  a  well-set  stage  for  the 
lively  comedy  which  these  vivacious 
youths  made  of  life  in  the  golden  hour  of 
coming  into  the  heritage  of  youth  and 
pleasure  and  Letters.  "Who  would 
have  thought,"  wrote  Irving  in  his 
sixty-seventh  year  to  the  owner  of  the 
old  Hall,  "that  we  should  ever  have  lived 
to  be  two  such  respectable  old  gentle- 
men?", and  many  years  after  the  curtain 
had  fallen  on  the  gaiety  and  fun  of  those 
hilarious  days,  Peter  Irving  often  re- 
called the  Saturdays  at  the  Hall,  when 
"we  sported  on  the  lawn  until  fatigued, 
and  sometimes  fell  sociably  into  a  gen- 
eral nap  in  the  drawing-room  in  the 


36  THE  WRITERS  OF 

dusk  of  the  evening."  In  town  the 
"lads  of  Kilkenny"  often  assembled  at 
Dyde's,  a  tavern  of  good  standing  in 
Park  Row ;  a  convenient  place  for  after- 
theatre  suppers. 

To  riot  at  Dyde's  on  imperial  champagne, 
And  then  scour  our  city  —  the  peace  to  maintain, 

was  an  occupation  which  these  gentle- 
men pursued  with  great  success.  When 
the  financial  resources  of  the  revelers 
ran  low  they  reduced  the  scale  of  expen- 
diture by  resorting  to  an  unpretentious 
porter-house  at  the  corner  of  Nassau 
and  John  Streets,  not  far  from  the 
theatre,  where  they  indulged  in  what 
they  depreciatingly  called  "Blackguard 
Suppers."  The  modern  misogynist 
habit  of  living  in  clubs  and  associating 
with  one  sex  only  had  not  come  into 
vogue  in  those  sociable  and  informal 
days,  and  the  young  men  who  formed 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  37 

the  Knickerbocker  group  were  on  good 
terms  with  the  belles  of  the  day,  and  ap- 
pear to  have  been  much  in  evidence  at 
social  functions.  Irving  asked  Henry 
Ogden,  who  had  sailed  for  China,  to 
"pick  up  two  or  three  queer  little  pretty 
things  that  would  cost  nothing  and  be 
acceptable  to  the  girls,"  and  there  are 
hints  of  a  Chinese  supper  later. 

The  first  number  of  "Salmagundi," 
the  initial  work  of  the  so-called  Knick- 
erbocker School,  was  published  on 
January  24,  1807,  preceded  by  some 
clever  and  mystifying  announcements  in 
the  "Evening  Post."  It  appeared  fort- 
nightly through  the  year,  and  came  to 
an  untimely  end  in  January,  1808,  not 
because  its  popularity  was  waning,  but 
because  its  publisher  was  disposed  to 
deal  in  an  arbitrary  fashion  with  its 
high-spirited  editors.     The  idea  of  a 


38  THE  WRITERS  OF 

periodical  which  would  deal  freely  and 
frankly,  in  a  satiric  or  humorous  spirit, 
with  the  fashions  and  foibles  of  the  town 
originated  with  Irving,  who  secured  his 
brother  William  and  his  friend  James 
K.  Paulding  as  associates  in  what 
turned  out  to  be  a  more  extended  and 
elaborate  frolic  than  they  had  hitherto 
planned.  They  proposed  to  amuse 
themselves  with  the  town,  and  they  suc- 
ceeded for  a  year  in  keeping  the  little 
city  on  tip-toe  expectation,  not  unmixed 
with  apprehension;  for  "Salmagundi," 
while  entirely  free  from  personalities 
and  scandal,  was  keen  in  its  comments 
on  manners  and  local  social  standards. 
It  was  written  in  the  manner  of  the 
"Spectator" ;  but  New  York  did  not 
furnish  the  varied  and  brilliant  material 
which  London  offered  Steele  and  Addi- 
son,  and   the   Irvings   and  Paulding 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  39 

lacked  the  sophisticated  charm,  the  in- 
timate and  adroit  skill  of  their  prede- 
cessors. They  were,  moreover,  very 
young  apprentices,  and  must  not  be 
judged  by  the  standards  set  by  the  mas- 
ters of  the  art,  whose  comments  on 
passing  fashions  have  become  contribu- 
tions to  literature.  The  banter  was 
somewhat  heavy-handed  and  the  humor 
gave  little  promise  of  the  lightness  of 
Irving's  later  manner,  or  of  the  clear- 
cut  and  nimble  wit  of  Lowell  and 
Holmes.  It  bore  the  stamp  of  a  pro- 
vincial society  and  was  rollicking  and 
hilarious  rather  than  keen  and  pungent. 

Irving  had  no  illusions  about  its 
quality.  The  "North  American  Re- 
view," however,  described  "Salmagundi" 
as  a  production  of  extraordinary  merit. 
Eleven  years  after  the  last  number  ap- 
peared, Irving  wrote  to  Brevoort  that, 


40  THE  WRITERS  OF 

while  it  was  pardonable  as  a  youthful 
production,  it  was  full  of  errors,  pueril- 
ities, and  imperfections ;  and  in  a  letter 
to  Irving,  Paulding  said :  "I  know  you 
consider  old  Sal.  a  sort  of  saucy,  flip- 
pant trollope  belonging  to  nobody  and 
not  worth  fathering."  "Salmagundi" 
had  the  crudity  of  youth,  but  it  also 
had  its  high  spirits,  its  gaiety,  and  its 
audacious  confidence  in  its  own  opin- 
ions. It  was  frolicsome  and  joyous  and 
not  devoid  of  literary  grace  and  skill, 
and  will  remain  the  happiest  contem- 
porary record  of  old  New  York. 

The  old  Government  House,  which 
had  been  built  for  the  President  of  the 
United  States,  faced  Bowling  Green 
when  "Salmagundi"  published  the 
chapter  entitled  "A  Tour  in  Broad- 
way." This  building  passed  through  a 
period  of  great  distinction  as  the  resi- 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  41 

dence  of  Governor  George  Clinton  and 
of  Chief  Justice  Jay,  and  then  lost  pres- 
tige as  the  local  post-office.  In  its 
cellar  were  stored  the  statues  of  gods 
and  goddesses  belonging  to  the  homeless 
Academy  of  Arts.  The  lead  statue  of 
George  the  Third,  which  formerly  stood 
on  Bowling  Green,  had  been  pulled 
down  and  run  into  bullets  to  be  aimed 
at  his  Majesty's  troops,  and  the  Green 
had  been  put  to  bucolic  uses  as  a  pas- 
turage for  cows.  Cortlandt  Street  cor- 
ner was  a  famous  vantage-ground  from 
which  to  see  the  belles  go  by  in  pleasant 
weather,  on  shopping  bent.  The  City 
Hall,  according  to  "Salmagundi,"  was 
a  resort  for  young  lawyers,  not  because 
they  had  business  there,  but  because 
they  had  no  business  anywhere  else. 

There  was  an  advanced  wing  of  so- 
ciety which  practised  the  latest  arts  of 


THE  WRITERS  OF 


pleasure  imported  from  the  Old  World. 
The  great  god  Style  already  had  its 
votaries,  and  then,  as  now,  many  were 
the  sacrifices  of  good  taste  and  refined 
manners  offered  at  its  painted  paste- 
board shrine.  "Salmagundi"  found  a 
rich  yield  of  satire  in  the  imitative  in- 
stinct which  shaped  many  of  the  cus- 
toms and  social  habits  of  the  hour.  It 
informs  us  that 

Style,  that  with  pride  each  empty  bosom  swells, 
Puffs  boys  to  manhood,  little  girls  to  belles. 

The  waltz  was  a  novelty  in  those  days, 
and  "Salmagundi"  "views  with  alarm" 
its  introduction  into  the  social  life  of 
the  town : 

Scarce  from  the  nursery  freed,  our  gentle  fair 
Are  yielded  to  the  dancing-master's  care; 
And,  ere  the  head  one  mite  of  sense  can  gain, 
Are  introduced  'mid  folly's  frippery  train. 
A  stranger's  grasp  no  longer  gives  alarms, 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  43 


Our  fair  surrender  to  their  very  arms, 

And  in  the  insidious  waltz  will  swim  and  twine, 

And  whirl  and  languish  tenderly  divine ! 

O,  how  I  hate  this  loving,  hugging  dance; 

This  imp  of  Germany  brought  up  in  France ! 

Let  France  its  whim,  its  sparkling  wit  supply. 
The  easy  grace  that  captivates  the  eye; 
But  curse  their  waltz, — their  loose,  lascivious  arts 
That  smooth  our  manners  to  corrupt  our  hearts  ! 

In  the  novel  and  play  of  the  time 
"Salmagundi"  found  still  more  alarm- 
ing evidences  of  a  decline  in  morals  and 
manners : 

Where  now  those  books,  from  which  in  days  of  yore 

Our  mothers  gained  their  literary  store? 

Alas !  stiff-skirted  Grandison  gives  place 

To  novels  of  a  new  and  rakish  race; 

And  honest  Bunyan's  pious,  dreaming  lore, 

To  the  lascivious  rhapsodies  of  Moore. 

And,  last  of  all,  behold  the  mimic  stage 

Its  morals  lend  to  polish  off  the  age, 

With  flimsy  farce,  a  comedy  miscall'd, 

Garnished  with  vulgar  cant,  and  proverbs  bald, 


44  THE  WRITERS  OF 

With  puns  most  puny,  and  a  plenteous  store 
Of  smutty  jokes,  to  eateh  a  gallery  roar. 
Or  see,  more  fatal,  graced  with  every  art 
To  charm  and  captivate  the  female  heart, 
The  false,  "the  gallant,  gay  Lothario"  smiles, 
And  loudly  boasts  his  base  seductive  wiles— 
In  glowing  colors  paints  Calista's  wrongs, 
And  with  voluptuous  scenes  the  tale  prolongs. 

The  stage  of  social  development  at 
which  the  town  had  arrived  is  indicated 
by  the  words  "female  heart."  Its  old- 
fashioned  virtue,  assailed  by  "Lalla 
Rookh"  and  "The  Penitents,"  had,  for- 
tunately, no  premonitions  that  its  in- 
fancy in  the  dramatization  of  vice  was 
to  pass  into  the  full  and  voluptuous 
maturity  of  these  later  days  of  the 
play  of  passion  without  a  shred  to  its 
back. 

"Salmagundi"  had  made  the  town 
smile,  but  "A  History  of  New  York" 
was  so  broad  in  its  mock-heroic  treat- 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  45 

ment  of  the  local  forefathers  that  it 
gave  grievous  offence  to  those  members 
of  the  early  Dutch  families  who  lacked 
the  sense  of  humor.  An  old  gentleman 
who  died  twenty  years  ago  once  said  to 
the  writer  of  these  lines,  with  perfect 
gravity,  that  Mr.  Irving  once  confessed 
to  him  that  the  history  was  not  entirely 
accurate !  It  appeared  just  before 
Christmas  in  1809,  preceded  by  cun- 
ningly devised  hints  and  intimations  in 
the  form  of  letters,  asking  for  informa- 
tion about  a  certain  old  gentleman  who 
bore  the  name  of  Knickerbocker,  who 
was  last  seen  resting  himself  near  Kings- 
bridge  by  the  passengers  in  the  Albany 
stage.  He  had  a  small  bundle  tied  in  a 
red  bandana  handkerchief  in  his  hands, 
and  appeared  to  be  very  much  fatigued. 
Ten  days  passed  without  news  of  the 
whereabouts  of  this  weary  old  gentle- 


46  THE  WRITERS  OP 

man,  when  it  was  announced  that  a  book 
in  his  handwriting  had  been  discovered 
in  his  room  and  would  be  disposed  of  to 
pay  the  arrears  of  his  board  and  lodg- 
ing! 

The  town  became  immensely  inter- 
ested, and  when  the  History  appeared  it 
was  eagerly  read,  laughed  over,  and 
denounced.  Never  was  a  book  more 
cleverly  announced  even  in  this  day, 
when  advertising  has  become  an  art 
based  on  a  deep  study  of  the  psychology 
of  the  crowd  and  the  effect  on  the 
human  mind  of  rhythmical  recurrence, 
at  short  intervals,  of  skilfully  phrased 
testimonials  from  eminent  persons  to 
the  superiority  of  certain  articles  with- 
out which  it  is  impossible  to  live.  There 
were  eighty  thousand  people  in  New 
York,  and  the  society  folk  who  consti- 
tuted the  "town"  in  the  technical  sense 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  47 

of  the  word  were  a  comparatively  small 
and  homogeneous  group,  many  of 
whom  were  of  Dutch  descent  and  bore 
names  long  honored  in  the  city  and 
now  inscribed  on  the  signs  on  the  cor- 
ners of  the  streets.  The  History, 
originally  projected  as  a  satire  on  a 
solemn  and  heavy-handed  "Picture  of 
New  York"  which  had  recently  ap- 
peared, had  widened  its  scope,  and,  like 
"The  History  of  the  Adventures  of 
Joseph  Andrews,"  which  started  out  to 
be  a  travesty  on  Richardson's  "Pamela," 
took  on  the  dimensions  of  an  original 
contribution  to  literature.  The  dedica- 
tion "To  the  New  York  Historical 
Society"  struck  the  key-note  of  its  bur- 
lesque gravity  of  manner  and  its  auda- 
cious and  rollicking  fun.  Its  appearance 
was  the  signal  for  a  blaze  of  wrath  ac- 
companied by  a  peal  of  laughter  from 


48  THE  WRITERS  OF 

New  York  to  Albany.  Mrs.  Hoffman 
wrote  to  Irving,  referring  to  one  of  his 
friends  who  was  a  social  leader:  "Your 
good  friend,  the  old  lady,  came  home  in 
a  great  stew  this  evening.  Such  a  scan- 
dalous story  had  got  about  town  —  a 
book  had  come  out  called  a  'History  of 
New  York' ;  nothing  but  a  satire  and 
ridicule  of  the  old  Dutch  people — and 
they  said  you  was  the  author ;  but  from 
this  foul  slander,  I  '11  venture  to  say,  she 
has  defended  you.  She  was  quite  in  a 
heat  about  it." 

Ten  years  later,  when  its  obvious  bur- 
lesque intention  ought  to  have  filtered 
into  the  most  solemn-minded,  it  was  de- 
scribed by  an  eminent  citizen  of  Dutch 
descent  as  "a  coarse  caricature."  Its 
humor  was  not  lost,  however,  by  a  host 
of  people  in  the  town  and  elsewhere. 
"If  it  is  true,  as  Sterne  says,"  wrote  a 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  49 

correspondent  in  a  Baltimore  newspa- 
per, "that  a  man  draws  a  nail  out  of  his 
coffin  every  time  he  laughs,  after  reading 
Irving's  book  your  coffin  will  fall  to 
pieces."  Walter  Scott  wrote  to  Irving's 
friend  Henry  Brevoort :  ''Looking  at  the 
simple  and  obvious  meaning  only,  I  have 
never  read  anything  so  closely  resem- 
bling the  style  of  Dean  Swift  as  the 
annals  of  Diedrich  Knickerbocker.  I 
have  employed  these  few  evenings  in 
reading  them  aloud  to  Mrs.  S.  and  two 
ladies  who  are  our  guests,  and  our  sides 
have  been  absolutely  sore  with  laugh- 
ing" 

This  audacious  burlesque  of  the  early 
history  of  the  city  and  of  its  men  of 
local  fame  and  Dutch  descent  was  the 
initial  volume  in  American  literature, 
the  first  book  of  what  used  to  be  called 
belles-lettres  published  in  this  country, 


50  THE  WRITERS  OF 

the  first  piece  of  American  writing  of 
literary  quality  which  caught  the  atten- 
tion of  Europe.  It  also  created  the 
Knickerbocker  Legend,  and  gave  the 
earliest  group  of  writers  in  New  York 
a  descriptive  name.  Diedrich  Knicker- 
bocker has  long  been  the  impersonation 
of  old  New  York,  and,  with  Rip  Van 
Winkle  and  Brom  Bones,  forms  the 
central  group  in  our  New  World  my- 
thology; and  "The  Legend  of  Sleepy 
Hollow,"  "Rip  Van  Winkle,"  and  the 
old-fashioned  gentleman  who  was  last 
seen  on  the  Albany  Post  Road  constitute 
our  chief  group  of  legendary  characters 
and  are  all  the  creations  of  Irving's 
imagination.  While  descriptions  of  the 
scenery  and  peoples  of  the  New  World 
had  been  written  south  of  Manhat- 
tan Island  and  theological  treatises 
abounded  in  New  England,  it  was  sig- 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  51 

nificant  of  the  metropolitan  spirit  of 
New  York  that  its  earliest  writers,  who 
were  also  the  earliest  writers  of  literary 
spirit  and  purpose  in  the  country,  were 
men  of  humor  and  urbanity,  and  on  easy 
terms  with  life. 


Two  years  after  the  publication  of 
"A  History  of  New  York,"  Irving 
was  living  at  No.  16  Broadway,  near 
Bowling  Green,  with  his  friend  Henry 
Brevoort.  He  had  made  various  jour- 
neys to  Albany  and  Washington  by  the 
tedious  methods  of  travel  in  use  at  the 
time,  and  his  letters  showed  conditions 
in  political  life  which  differed  from  those 
prevailing  to-day  chiefly  in  being  more 
sordid  and  unscrupulous.  The  coterie 
who  were   to   become  known   as  the 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  53 

Knickerbocker  group  had  become  a  lit- 
tle less  boisterous  in  their  convivialities, 
but  not  less  persuaded  that  literature 
and  jovial  good-fellowship  throve  well 
together.  They  were  often  at  the  Hall 
on  the  Passaic  or  at  the  home  of  Cap- 
tain Phillips  in  the  Highlands  of  the 
Hudson,  where  spacious  mansions  and 
large  estates  had  multiplied ;  and  there 
were  houses  in  town,  like  Mrs.  Ren- 
wick's,  where  these  gay  young  men  were 
at  ease. 

On  the  25th  of  May,  1815,  Irving 
sailed  for  Liverpool,  and  did  not  set 
foot  on  Manhattan  Island  again  until 
1832.  He  had  given  New  York  the 
Knickerbocker  tradition,  made  the  first 
important  contribution  to  belles-lettres 
in  this  country,  and  conferred  on  the 
metropolis  the  distinction  of  being  the 
birthplace  of  American  literature. 


54  THE  WRITERS  OF 

Between  the  publication  of  "Salma- 
gundi" in  1807  and  Irving's  return  from 
Europe  in  1832,  the  group  of  young 
men  who  belonged  to  his  coterie  and 
who  formed  the  Knickerbocker  group 
had  their  golden  age  of  easy  conditions 
so  far  as  absence  of  competition  was 
concerned.  Long  afterward  Irving  said 
to  George  William  Curtis :  "You  young 
literary  fellows  to-day  have  a  harder 
time  than  we  old  fellows  had.  You  trip 
over  each  other's  heels ;  there  are  so 
many  of  you.  We  had  it  all  our  own 
way.  But  the  account  is  square,  for  you 
can  make  as  much  by  a  lecture  as  we 
made  by  a  book."  The  "town"  lasted 
well  on  into  the  Thirties,  but  it  was  no 
longer  the  undisturbed  provincial  city. 
Cooper,  Bryant,  Willis,  and  Poe  had 
become  residents,  and  there  was  a  fur- 
ther progression  toward  cosmopolitan- 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  55 

ism.  Moreover,  the  city  was  fast  out- 
growing its  old-time  metes  and  bounds, 
and  complaints  about  the  distances  be- 
tween sections  and  lamentations  for  the 
passing  of  "the  good  old  times"  began 
to  be  heard.  While  Irving  was  indus- 
triously transcribing  the  half-forgotten 
background  of  ripe  landscape  and  an- 
cient custom  in  the  Old  World  and  win- 
ning a  reputation  of  the  most  enviable 
kind,  the  rollicking  friends  who  had 
been  young  together  were  passing  into 
maturity  and  making  the  most  of  the 
morning  hours  of  reputation  and  po- 
sition. 

No  more  interesting  face  was  seen  in 
the  streets  of  New  York  in  the  days  of 
Irving's  long  expatriation  than  that  of 
James  Kirke  Paulding.  The  regular 
and  clear-cut  features,  the  smiling  but 
penetrating  eyes,  the  compact,  well- 


56  THE  WRITERS  OF 

poised  head  with  its  mass  of  hair  worn 
with  the  picturesque  carelessness  of  na- 
ture, gave  him  a  look  of  distinction.  He 
was  a  very  companionable  man,  and 
there  was  no  suggestion  of  the  precision 
and  preoccupation  of  the  man  of  affairs 
about  Paulding;  his  convictions  were 
deep-set  and  never  kept  in  the  back- 
ground if  there  was  occasion  for  their 
expression;  but,  like  all  companionable 
men,  he  knew  how  to  find  common 
ground  with  a  friend  ample  enough  for 
the  freest  interchange  of  jest  and  idea. 
He  was  of  colonial  stock,  as  were  all  the 
men  of  his  craft  in  New  York.  For 
many  years  before  the  Revolution  the 
Pauldings  had  lived  in  Tarry  town, 
which  is  intimately  associated  with  the 
Knickerbocker  tradition ;  but  that  lovely 
shore  of  the  Hudson  was  open  to  the 
ravages  of  both  armies  during  the  war, 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  57 

and  the  family  removed  to  Dutchess 
County.  This  county  lies  north  of 
Westchester,  and  both  have  fed  New 
York  with  men  of  distinction.  Dutchess 
claims  to  have  been  the  mother  of 
beautiful  women  as  well,  one  of  them  of 
such  surpassing  loveliness  that  the  Czar 
of  Russia  of  that  day  pronounced  her 
the  most  beautiful  woman  he  had  ever 
seen.  The  poet's  father  was  active  in 
the  American  cause,  and  his  cousin  John 
was  one  of  the  captors  of  Major  Andre. 
His  boyhood  was  so  ravaged  by  the  un- 
certainties and  hardships  of  war  that 
he  said  later  that  he  never  wished  to  be 
young  again. 

He  was  in  his  nineteenth  year  when 
he  came  to  New  York,  and,  through  his 
acquaintance  with  William  Irving,  met 
the  group  of  young  men  who  were  mak- 
ing a  business  of  pleasure  and  a  recrea- 


58  THE  WRITERS  OF 

tion  of  literature.  He  and  Washington 
Irving  were  soon  fast  friends,  and  the 
first  number  of  "Salmagundi"  was  their 
j oint  production.  Paulding,  like  Cooper, 
became  involved  later  in  controversies 
which  gave  sharp  point  to  his  pen,  but  in 
"Salmagundi"  he  shared  with  Irving  the 
gaiety  of  spirit  and  urbanity  of  manner 
which  made  the  keen  satire  of  that 
quick-witted  journal  entertaining  even 
to  its  victims.  Duyckinck  was  of  opin- 
ion that  the  papers  in  Oriental  guise 
were  from  Paulding's  hand,  and  that 
he  wrote  many  of  the  best  descriptive 
passages ;  and  characterized  his  style  as 
stamped  by  feeling,  observation,  friendly 
truth,  and  genial  sympathy.  He  was 
one  of  the  first  to  state  forcibly  the 
American  case  in  the  long  and  at  times 
acrimonious  interchange  of  criticism 
between  this  country  and  England,  and 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  59 

"The  Diverting  History  of  John  Bull 
and  Brother  Jonathan"  was  so  keen  a 
piece  of  satire,  but  so  free  from  malice, 
that  it  was  reprinted  in  England.  A 
later  satire  in  the  form  of  a  parody  on 
the  "Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel"  made 
such  stinging  comment  on  the  British 
raids  on  Chesapeake  Bay  as  to  be 
thought  worthy  of  the  attention  of  the 
"Quarterly  Review,"  an  adept  in  the 
heavy-handed  castigation  in  vogue  at 
that  time.  A  retort  to  the  strictures  of 
the  "Quarterly  Review"  soon  followed 
in  pamphlet  form,  and  raided  English 
morals  and  manners  with  such  effective- 
ness that  it  caught  the  attention  of 
President  Madison. 

In  1816  Paulding  traveled  in  Vir- 
ginia and  wrote  one  of  the  earliest  of 
those  local  studies  which  record  the 
interstate  commerce  of  observation  and 


60  THE  WRITERS  OF 

criticism  for  which  this  country  supplies 
such  abundant  material.  The  spirited 
and  frank  retorts  to  the  somewhat  op- 
pressive "condescension  of  foreigners" 
had  made  Paulding  known  to  the  coun- 
try at  large,  but  when  "The  Backwoods- 
man" appeared  in  1818  its  elaborate 
and  very  formal  heroics,  descriptive  of 
the  fortunes  of  an  emigrant  who  made 
the  perilous  change  from  the  Hudson  to 
the  frontier,  found  the  same  scanty 
measure  of  favor  now  generally  extended 
to  narrative  poems.  The  poem  enjoyed 
a  distinction,  however,  at  that  time  very 
rare:  it  was  translated  into  French. 
Paulding's  friend  and  contemporary  has 
left  a  somewhat  enigmatic  comment  on 
this  original  American  production : 

Homer  was  well  enough ;  but  would  he  ever 
Have  written,  think  you,  "The  Backwoodsman"  ? 
Never ! 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  6l 

If  these  lines  had  fallen  under  the  eye 
of  Matthew  Arnold  we  should  have 
had  another  light-handed  international 
amenity  to  conti'ibute  to  the  joy  of 
both  nations. 

When  Paulding  tried  to  recall  the 
atmosphere  and  tone  of  "Salmagundi" 
in  1819,  it  was  soon  evident  that  the 
"town"  of  the  earl}'  Knickerbocker  had 
merged  into  a  larger  community,  and 
much  of  the  wit  went  wide  of  the  mark. 
Paulding,  meanwhile,  had  entered  public 
service  and  was  living  in  Washington. 
In  1823  he  published  his  first  novel, 
"Koningsmarke,"  a  study  of  life  among 
the  Swedish  settlers  on  the  banks  of  the 
Delaware.  But  the  satirical  impulse 
was  strong  in  him,  and  the  title  of  his 
next  book,  "John  Bull  in  America ;  or, 
the  New  Munchausen,"  is  sufficiently  de- 
scriptive to  make  further  comment  un- 


62  THE  WRITERS  OF 

necessary;  while  "The  Merry  Tales  of 
the  Three  Wise  Men  of  Gotham,"  which 
appeared  a  year  later,  touched  some- 
what caustically  the  new  social  doctrine 
of  Robert  Dale  Owen,  the  rising  science 
of  phrenology,  and  other  matters  of  in- 
terest at  the  moment.  His  aptness  for 
satire  was  braced  in  Paulding  by  a  lively 
dislike  for  the  heavy  contemptuousness 
of  manner  of  some  Englishmen  of  the 
time,  and  the  abundant  material  fur- 
nished by  some  of  these  candid  friends 
led  him  again  to  enter  the  field  with  one 
of  the  keenest  of  his  satires,  "The  Mir- 
ror for  Travelers,"  a  burlesque  guide- 
book and  record  of  travel  in  this 
country,  in  a  cleverly  imitated  British 
manner. 

In  this  satiric  view  Paulding  was  a 
true  child  of  the  Knickerbocker  spirit, 
and  his  next  books,  "Tales  of  the  Good 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  63 

Woman"  and  "Chronicles  of  the  City  of 
Gotham,"  purported  to  be  translations 
of  legends  of  early  New  York.  A  Mrs. 
Grant,  who  had  written  pleasantly  of 
the  old  Dutch  settlers,  furnished  ma- 
terial for  "The  Dutchman's  Fireside"; 
a  story  which  so  greatly  pleased  the 
readers  of  the  day  that  it  went  promptly 
through  six  editions  and  was  repub- 
lished in  England,  France,  and  Holland. 
In  Washington,  as  in  New  York,  Paul- 
ding was  a  thoroughgoing  Knicker- 
bocker; but  he  had  an  eye  for  manners 
and  great  zest  for  the  pleasures  of  hos- 
pitality, and  his  account  of  Virginia  was 
followed,  the  year  after  the  appearance 
of  the  Dutch  novel,  by  "Westward 
Ho!",  a  story  that,  moving  with  the 
southern  flow  of  emigration,  began  in 
Virginia  and  was  worked  out  in  Ken- 
tucky.   Paulding  was  charmed  by  the 


64  THE  WRITERS  OF 

plantation  life,  the  generous  hospital- 
ity, and  the  winning  Southern  temper- 
ament, and  in  1836,  when  the  tide  of 
feeling  in  the  country  was  rising,  wrote 
an  uncompromising  defence  of  slavery, 
an  institution  with  which  he  was  not  un- 
familiar in  his  own  State,  where  it  was 
not  abolished  until  1799.  In  1837 
Paulding  entered  the  cabinet  of  a 
Knickerbocker  President,  Van  Buren,  as 
Secretary  of  the  Navy. 

On  retiring  from  office,  Paulding 
found  a  delightful  home  overlooking  the 
Hudson,  not  far  from  Poughkeepsie, 
within  sight  of  many  of  the  localities  en- 
deared by  early  associations  and  ancient 
Dutch  traditions.  There  he  practised 
the  arts  of  agriculture  and  of  writing 
with  growing  content.  He  was  as  busy 
within  doors  as  without,  and  his  pen 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  65 

was  driven  as  regularly  as  his  plough. 
A  story  of  the  Revolutionary  period, 
and,  later,  a  novel  laid  partly  in  this 
country  and  partly  in  England,  and  an 
American  comedy,  "The  Bucktails ;  or, 
The  Americans  in  England,"  were  fruits 
of  this  well-ordered  leisure.  Five  years 
later  he  gave  this  very  comfortable  pic- 
ture of  his  manner  of  life : 

"I  smoke  a  little,  read  a  little,  write  a 
little,  ruminate  a  little,  grumble  a  little, 
and  sleep  a  great  deal.  I  was  once  great 
at  pulling  up  weeds,  to  which  I  have  a 
mortal  antipathy,  especially  bull's-eyes, 
wild  carrots,  and  toad-flax,  alias  butter- 
and-eggs.  But  my  working  days  are 
almost  over.  I  find  that  carrying  sev- 
enty-five years  on  my  shoulders  is  pretty 
nearly  equal  to  the  same  number  of 
pounds ;  and  instead  of  labouring  my- 


66  THE  WRITERS  OF 

self,  I  sit  in  the  shade  watching  the 
labours  of  others,  which  I  find  quite  suf- 
ficient exercise." 

Sitting  pipe  in  mouth  on  his  veranda 
overlooking  the  river,  watching  the 
harvesters  and  the  haze  on  the  Catskills 
on  those  autumn  afternoons  when  Rip 
Van  Winkle's  slumbers  were  deepest,  the 
old  man  delighted  to  recall  the  golden 
Knickerbocker  age  before  the  "town" 
had  been  lost  in  the  metropolis,  to  tell 
the  brave  story  of  the  youth  of  the 
Knickerbocker  group,  to  draw  the  por- 
traits of  the  great  men  he  had  seen  in 
Washington,  to  castigate  John  Bull 
with  passionate  eloquence  whenever  oc- 
casion arose,  and  to  chant  the  elegy  of 
age  on  the  good  old  times  of  the  patriots 
and  demigods.  A  sturdy  man,  of  deep 
convictions  and  passionate  feelings, 
Paulding  shared  Irving's  sense  of  hu- 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  67 

mor,  high  spirits,  and  gift  for  satire ; 
but,  while  Irving  saw  the  Old  World 
with  sympathetic  eyes  and  reknit  the 
severed  ties  between  the  young  and  the 
old  country,  Paulding  remained  a  pro- 
vincial in  experience  and  feeling;  loyal, 
prejudiced,  partisan;  a  man  of  a  city, 
but  not  a  man  of  the  world. 


The  last  stages  of  the  Knickerbocker 
age  began  when  Fitz-Greene  Halleck 
appeared  on  the  scene.  He  was  not  to 
the  manner  born ;  he  came  from  Guil- 
ford, Connecticut ;  but  he  felt  the 
Knickerbocker  spirit  and  shared  its 
achievements.  Born  in  one  of  the  love- 
liest of  the  old  New  England  villages, 
whose  distinction  was  invariably  ex- 
pressed in  a  green  or  common,  a  Con- 
gregational spire,  an  academy,  and  rows 
68 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  69 

of  graceful  elms,  Halleck  brought  to 
New  York,  in  1811,  a  good  school  train- 
ing and  skill  in  bookkeeping  gained  in 
that  forerunner  of  the  modern  depart- 
ment store,  the  country  store.  The 
laughter  which  greeted  the  appearance 
of  the  "Salmagundi"  papers  was  a  thing 
of  the  past,  and  the  anger  which  met 
Diedrich  Knickerbocker's  story  of  his 
ancestors  had  lost  its  heat ;  the  merry 
youths  who  gathered  at  Cockloft  Hall 
had  blown  the  foam  off  the  wine  of  life, 
though  they  had  not  lost  their  zest  in 
the  mere  act  of  living ;  Irving  was  board- 
ing on  lower  Broadway  with  Brevoort 
as  a  roommate,  and  there  was  plenty  of 
good  talk  but  very  little  work  done. 

Halleck  made  a  very  quiet  entrance 
into  the  city  which  was  later  to  honor 
him  with  one  of  the  few  statues  com- 
memorate of  its  Men  of  Letters.  He 


70  THE  WRITERS  OF 

was  a  born  accountant,  and  during  his 
long  residence  in  New  York  he  served 
two  men  in  this  capacity — Mr.  Jacob 
Barker  and  Mr.  John  Jacob  Astor.  Mr. 
Astor,  at  his  death  in  1848,  left  him  an 
annuity  large  enough  in  those  days  of 
moderate  prices  to  enable  him  to  retire 
to  his  native  town  and  enjoy  ease  of 
condition  and  industrious  leisure  in  a 
fine  old  colonial  house  which  had  some 
associations  with  Shelley's  adventurous 
grandfather. 

Halleck  did  not  find  his  way  into  the 
Knickerbocker  group  at  the  start,  but 
he  early  made  acquaintance  with  Joseph 
Rodman  Drake  and  the  two  became  ar- 
dent friends.  Drake  was  a  young  man 
of  captivating  personality ;  variously 
gifted  and  brilliant ;  a  thoroughbred  in 
his  sense  of  honor  and  a  certain  gallant 
rectitude  and  courage ;  a  man  of  charm- 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  71 

ing  fancy,  who,  at  the  age  of  five,  was 
writing  clever  verse.  By  descent  he  was 
an  American  of  the  Americans,  if  we 
accept  the  dictum  of  Richard  Grant 
White  that  to  be  an  American  one  must 
have  come  of  ancestors  who  arrived  in 
this  country  before  the  War  of  the 
Revolution.  Drake  had  an  ancestor  in 
the  Plymouth  Company,  and  his  father 
held  a  colonelcy  in  Washington's  army. 
His  mother  was  equally  well-born  in  the 
true  sense  of  the  word.  His  childhood 
was  overshadowed  by  the  death  of  both 
his  parents  and  the  bitterness  of  pov- 
erty; but  the  boy  was  of  a  chivalrous 
spirit  and  faced  hard  conditions  with  a 
resolution  which  was  an  assurance  of 
success.  His  active  fancy  opened  a  door 
of  escape  from  these  conditions,  and  he 
played  many  romantic  parts  in  the 
drama  of  his  bleak  boyhood.    He  was 


72  THE  WRITERS  OF 

an  omnivorous  reader,  his  memory  let 
nothing  escape,  and  despite  his  lack  of 
opportunity  he  became  exceptionally 
well  informed.  His  facility  in  verse- 
writing,  so  early  developed,  grew  with 
his  years ;  and  his  endeavor  to  make  a 
man  of  business  of  himself  failed  ut- 
terly. 

Drake  was  eighteen  and  Halleck 
twenty-three  when,  on  a  sailing  party  in 
the  bay,  they  met  James  De  Kay, 
a  young  medical  student.  The  day  was 
genial,  youth  was  at  the  prow  and  also 
at  the  helm,  and  Halleck  remarked  that 
"it  would  be  heaven  to  lounge  upon  the 
rainbow  and  read  Tom  Campbell."  It 
requires  some  effort  of  the  imagination 
to  recall  Campbell's  popularity  at  that 
time  and  to  revive  the  state  of  mind 
which  could  see  in  him  a  possible  rela- 
tion with  the  rainbow ;  but  in  youth  and 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  73 

fair  weather  all  things  tremble  on  the 
verge  of  poetry.  Literature  was  still 
in  the  future  for  the  ardent  youths,  but 
life  was  within  easy  reach,  and  espe- 
cially the  pleasant  social  life  of  a  small 
city.  In  this  same  year  Irving  was  be- 
ginning to  look  upon  the  quiet  pleasures 
of  New  York  with  the  jaundiced  eye  of 
a  veteran  man  of  the  world  upon  whom 
the  weight  of  twenty-nine  years  bore 
heavily.  Writing  of  a  certain  vivacious 
young  woman  who  played  "the  spark- 
ler," he  said :  "God  defend  me  from  such 
vivacity  as  hers  in  future — such  smart 
speeches  without  meaning ;  such  bubble- 
and-squeak  nonsense.  I 'd  as  lieve  stand 
by  a  frying-pan  for  an  hour  and  listen 
to  the  cooking  of  apple  fritters";  and 
he  reports  that  when  he  was  out  of  the 
house  he  did  not  stop  running  for  a  mile. 
He  speaks  irreverently  of  the  "divinities 


74  THE  WRITERS  OF 

and  blossoms"  of  the  hour,  of  "rascally 
little  tea  parties,"  and  protests  that  he 
is  weary  of  the  "tedious  commonplaces 
of  fashionable  society." 

The  two  young  poets,  hidden  in  an 
obscurity  which  they  found  very  pleas- 
ant, were  probably  in  great  awe  of  the 
brilliant  young  Knickerbocker  who  had 
dared  to  ridicule  the  town,  and  who,  in 
the  glory  of  his  local  fame,  was  eager 
for  fresh  fields  and  a  wider  horizon. 
They  found  very  excellent  company 
and  much  pleasant  talk  in  the  city,  and 
they  hunted  the  joys  of  youth  together. 
Halleck  described  Drake  at  this  time  as 
"perhaps  the  handsomest  man  in  New 
York — a  face  like  an  angel,  a  form  like 
an  Apollo."  Music  was  one  of  the  ac- 
complishments of  Drake,  and  he  played 
the  flute  at  a  time  when  that  instrument 
and  the  harp  were  the  symbols  of  social 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  75 

cultivation.  One  of  their  hostesses  was 
Mrs.  Peter  Stuyvesant,  whose  spacious 
house,  not  far  from  the  square  which 
bears  her  name,  with  its  gardens  and 
lawn  stretching  to  the  East  River,  was 
a  centre  of  social  activity.  The  city 
ended  at  Canal  Street,  and  a  visit  in  the 
vicinity  of  old  St.  Mark's  was  like  going 
to  Tarrytown  or  Trenton  in  these  swift- 
footed  days.  Mrs.  Stuyvesant  declared, 
when  First  Avenue  was  laid  out  and  this 
earliest  intrusion  into  the  privacy  of  a 
great  colonial  estate  made,  that  her 
heart  was  broken.  A  pear-tree  which 
stood  long  at  the  corner  of  Third  Ave- 
nue and  Thirteenth  Street  was  for  many 
decades  the  only  surviving  relic  of  this 
hospitable  home. 

The  country  house  of  Mr.  Henry 
Eckford  was  a  kind  of  second  home  to 
the  young  poets,  though  its  distance 


76  THE  WRITERS  OF 

from  the  city  was  a  test  of  their  enjoy- 
ment of  its  hospitality.  It  stood  in  a 
pine  grove  on  Love  Lane  where  Twenty- 
first  Street  crosses  Sixth  Avenue !  New 
York  was  surrounded  by  spacious  coun- 
try places,  not  only  on  the  upper  part 
of  the  island,  but  across  the  three  rivers. 
Among  these  sylvan  homes  was  that  of 
the  well-known  Hunt  family,  on  the 
Long  Island  shore  almost  opposite 
West  Farms,  to  which  Halleck  and 
Drake  made  their  way  by  stage  and 
small  boat,  and  where  they  often  found 
delightful  companionship  over  Sunday. 
On  these  occasions  Halleck  gave  himself 
up  to  the  pleasures  of  "female  society," 
but  Drake  went  a-fishing  in  his  old 
clothes.  In  the  evening  the  two  friends 
appeared  in  different  roles :  Halleck  told 
stories  and  recited  verse,  and  Drake 
sang. 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  77 

Drake  had  studied  medicine  and  em- 
barked in  the  business  of  selling  drugs 
at  one  of  the  corners  of  Park  Row,  and 
there  is  a  tradition  that  in  this  building, 
which  was  both  a  dwelling  and  a  shop, 
the  second  series  of  satirical  papers  on 
the  town,  "The  Croakers,"  was  con- 
ceived and  brought  forth.  These  lively 
satires,  which  took  the  town  by  storm, 
were  in  verse  of  varying  degrees  of  wit 
and  melody.  They  were  clever  skits  on 
men  and  manners,  many  of  them  bur- 
lesques, and  appeared  first  in  the  col- 
umns of  the  "Evening  Post,"  over  the 
signature  "Croakers,"  adapted  from 
"The  Good-Natured  Man."  This  was  in 
March,  1819,  and  thenceforth  "Croak- 
ers" appeared  at  short  intervals  and 
speedily  became  the  topic  of  the  town. 
The  poets  and  Coleman,  the  editor  of 
the  "Evening  Post,"  adroitly  concealed 


78  THE  WRITERS  OF 

the  authorship  of  the  poems,  and  great 
was  the  speculation  on  that  subject. 
So  great  was  the  wincing  and  shrinking 
at  "The  Croakers,"  that  every  person 
was  on  tenterhooks ;  "neither  knavery 
nor  folly  has  slept  quietly  since  our  first 
commencement,"  wrote  one  of  the  two 
poets  in  a  mood  of  pardonable  elation. 
Poor  Coleman  was  almost  submerged  by 
the  flood  of  imitations  called  out  by  the 
brilliant  success  of  the  series.  Con- 
ceived in  the  spirit  of  mischief,  these 
facile  and  fetching  rhymes  have  pre- 
served the  humors  of  the  hour,  and,  with 
"Salmagundi,"  are  entertaining  chap- 
ters in  the  history  of  the  decade  between 
1819  and  1829. 

General  Wilson  recalls  a  remark  of 
Drake's  which  explains  the  lightness 
and  fun  of  these  satirical  and  burlesque 
pieces.    The  young  poet  had  just  cor- 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  79 

rected  the  proof  of  some  lines  he  had 
recently  written,  when  he  turned  a  glow- 
ing face  to  his  collaborator  and  cried 
out:  "Oh,  Halleck,  is  n't  this  happi- 
ness !"  Halleck  may  be  pardoned  for 
writing  to  his  sister:  "We  have  tasted 
all  the  pleasures  and  many  of  the  pains 
of  literary  fame  and  notoriety  under  the 
assumed  name  of  'The  Croakers' ;  we 
have  had  the  consolation  of  seeing  and 
hearing  ourselves  praised,  puffed,  eulo- 
gized, execrated,  and  threatened  as 
much,  I  believe  I  can  say  with  truth,  as 
any  writers  since  the  days  of  Junius. 
The  whole  town  has  talked  of  nothing 
else  for  three  weeks  past,  and  every 
newspaper  has  done  us  the  honour  to 
mention  us  in  some  way,  either  of  praise 
or  censure,  but  all  uniting  in  owning  our 
talents  and  genius." 

The  poets,  meanwhile,  were  working 


80  THE  WRITERS  OF 

individually  as  well  as  collectively.  In 
1819,  while  the  town  was  still  talking 
about  "The  Croakers,"  "The  Culprit 
Fay,"  written  in  August,  1816,  was 
gaining  a  wide  reputation  for  Drake, 
and  there  were  many  who  hailed  him  as 
the  coming  poet.  It  was  a  charming 
flight  of  fancy,  delicately  poised  in  mid- 
air, and  kept  aloft  with  that  ease  which 
is  born  of  native  gift  and  skill  in  versifi- 
cation. The  story  runs  that  Cooper 
and  Halleck,  in  a  warm  discussion  of  the 
romantic  associations  of  the  Scotch 
lakes  and  streams  and  their  rich  con- 
tributions to  poetry,  declared  that 
American  rivers  offered  no  such  material 
to  the  poet.  Drake  not  only  ardently 
espoused  the  cause  of  the  American  riv- 
ers, but  in  three  days'  time  re-enforced 
his  argument  by  writing  "The  Culprit 
Fay,"  with  the  Highlands  of  the  Hud- 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  81 

son  as  a  background,  but  bringing  in 
impressions  received  on  the  shore  of 
Long  Island  Sound;  frankly  confess- 
ing his  departure  from  poetic  realism 
in  an  ingeniously  worded  note:  "The 
reader  will  find  some  of  the  inhabitants 
of  salt  water  a  little  further  up  the 
Hudson  than  they  usually  travel,  but 
not  too  far  for  the  purposes  of  poetry." 

In  May,  1819,  Drake  wrote  his  popu- 
lar song,  "The  American  Flag,"  which 
appeared  first  in  the  columns  of  the 
"Evening  Post,"  with  very  warm  com- 
mendation from  the  editor:  "Sir  Philip 
Sidney  said,  as  Addison  tells  us,  that  he 
could  never  read  the  old  ballad  of 
'Chevy  Chase'  without  feeling  his  heart 
beat  within  him  as  at  the  sound  of  a 
trumpet.  The  following  lines,  which 
are  to  be  ranked  among  the  highest 
inspirations  of  the  Muse,  will  suggest 


82 


THE  WRITERS  OF 


similar  associations  in  the  breast  of  the 
gallant  American  officer."  The  praise 
was  a  little  too  ardent,  but  what  the 
song  lacked  in  poetic  quality  it  made  up 
in  the  ardor  of  its  patriotism,  and  it 
has  passed,  through  the  school-books, 
into  the  minds  of  many  generations  of 
American  boys,  and  has  been  proudly  de- 
claimed on  many  platforms.  It  ought  to 
be  remembered  that  Halleck  wrote  the 
closing  lines: 

Forever  float  that  standard  sheet ! 

Where  breathes  the  foe  but  falls  before  us, 
With  Freedom's  soil  beneath  our  feet, 

And  Freedom's  banner  streaming  o'er  us. 

One  of  the  prominent  preachers  of 
the  town  at  that  time  was  the  Rev. 
Dr.  Samuel  H.  Cox,  a  Presbyterian 
of  unadulterated  Calvinistic  views  and 
the  author  of  the  well-known  hymn  be- 
ginning: 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  83 

We  are  living,  we  are  dwelling 
In  a  grand  and  awful  time, 

In  an  age  on  ages  telling, 
To  be  living  is  sublime. 

The  free  poetic  temperament  of  the  two 
poets  revolted  at  the  rigid  doctrines 
powerfully  and  dogmatically  expounded 
by  Dr.  Cox,  and  they  amused  themselves 
by  delivering  sermons  of  a  very  different 
theology  to  a  very  small  but  highly 
appreciative  audience  of  two  intimate 
friends.  Unfortunately,  these  produc- 
tions, which  would  have  made  a  highly 
original  contribution  to  sermonic  liter- 
ature, have  not  been  preserved. 

The  friendship  of  Halleck  and  Drake, 
compounded  of  love  and  laughter,  of 
work  and  wit,  was  severed  by  the  death 
of  Drake  in  September,  1820.  There  is 
no  more  winning  and  unworldly  chapter 
in  the  story  of  New  York  than  the  gen- 


84  THE  WRITERS  OF 

erous  and  loyal  comradeship  of  these 
two  young  men,  who,  like  Irving  and 
Paulding,  conspired  against  the  dullness 
of  the  town  and  made  it  smile  at  its  own 
follies.  Neither  poet  had  genius,  but 
both  had  talent ;  and  Drake,  like  Hamil- 
ton, belongs  to  the  group  of  men  of 
brilliancy  and  personal  charm  whose 
presence  has  given  distinction  to  New 
York  in  every  decade  since  it  was 
founded. 

Halleck  had  written  "Fanny"  in  1819, 
a  satirical  poem  which  dealt  with  con- 
temporary manners  and  men  with  a 
freedom  that  stopped  short  of  imperti- 
nence, but  afforded  much  amusement  to 
all  save  the  solemn-minded.  The  poem 
passed  through  several  editions  and  car- 
ried Halleck's  reputation  to  distant 
parts  of  the  country.  A  visit  in  Europe 
gave    the    young    poet    themes  like 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  85 

"Burns"  and  "Alnwick  Castle"  and 
"Marco  Bozzaris,"  which  he  treated 
with  spirit  and  metrical  effectiveness. 
Few  boys  have  grown  up  in  America 
since  1827  who  have  not  heard  of  the 
Turk  who  dreamed  in  his  guarded  tent 
of  the  hour  when  Greece,  "her  knee  in 
suppliance  bent,  should  tremble  at  his 
power."  Perhaps  no  song  written  in 
this  country  has  had  wider  currency 
than  this  spirited  lyric,  born  at  a  time 
when  the  Greek  struggle  for  independ- 
ence appealed  to  the  imagination  of  the 
world.  In  1848,  when  his  service  in  the 
office  of  John  Jacob  Astor  was  termi- 
nated by  the  death  of  that  adventurous 
capitalist,  with  whom  Irving  had  also 
had  very  pleasant  relations,  Halleck 
went  back  to  Guilford  and  spent  nine- 
teen peaceful  years  in  a  house  which 
bore  the  impress  of  colonial  taste  in  its 


86  THE  WRITERS  OF 

dignity  and  spaciousness.  He  had  com- 
fortable means  and  the  leisure  so  dear  to 
a  man  of  literary  taste  and  habit ;  but 
he  never  lost  his  love  for  the  city  which 
had  given  him  such  wealth  of  friendship. 
"I  shall  never  cease  to  'hail,'  as  the  sail- 
ors say,  from  your  good  city  of  New 
York,  of  which  a  residence  of  more  than 
fifty  years  made  me  a  citizen,"  he  wrote 
to  an  admirer  who  wished  to  reproduce 
a  view  of  his  home  in  Guilford.  "There 
I  always  considered  myself  at  home,  and 
elsewhere  but  a  visitor.  If,  therefore, 
you  wish  to  embellish  my  poem 
('Fanny')  with  a  view  of  my  country- 
seat  (it  was  literally  mine  every  Sun- 
day for  years),  let  it  be  taken  from 
the  top  of  Weehawk  Hill,  overlooking 
New  York,  to  whose  scenes  and  associa- 
tions the  poem  is  almost  exclusively  de- 
voted." 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  87 

Halleck  died  at  Guilford,  November 
19,  1867,  and  has  been  commemorated  by 
substantial  memorials  both  there  and  in 
New  York.  A  granite  pillar  was  dedi- 
cated to  his  memory  in  his  native  town, 
in  the  presence  of  a  great  multitude, 
Bayard  Taylor  delivering  the  address 
and  Dr.  Holmes  contributing  one  of  his 
happy  occasional  poems.  In  May, 
1877,  a  bronze  statue  of  Halleck  was 
unveiled  in  Central  Park  by  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States.  Bryant,  the 
head  of  the  guild  of  American  poets, 
and  William  Allen  Butler,  the  accom- 
plished and  versatile  author  of  "Noth- 
ing to  Wear,"  delivered  addresses,  and  a 
poem  by  Whittier  was  read. 

Poets  of  far  greater  genius  than 
Halleck  have  been  far  less  adequately 
honored  than  he ;  for  he  was  the  poet  of 
a  half-century  and  of  a  city,  not  of  an 


88  KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK 

age  and  a  nation.  But  he  lived  in  a 
fortunate  time ;  he  was  singularly  happy 
in  his  associations  ;  and  he  was  a  delight- 
ful companion,  genial  and  witty,  scorn- 
ful and  satirical  only  in  dealing  with 
impostors  and  pretenders. 


That  light-handed,  urbane,  and  suc- 
cessful editor  and  poet,  Nathaniel 
Parker  Willis,  long  an  active  and  en- 
tertaining figure  in  the  New  York  of 
the  Thirties  and  Forties,  barely  touches 
the  Knickerbocker  town  of  the  Twen- 
ties. In  the  spring  of  1829  he  started 
the  "American  Monthly  Magazine"  in 
Boston — a  periodical  described  at  a 
later  day  by  that  well-known  wit, 
"Tom"  Appleton,  as  "a  slim  monthly, 
89 


90  THE  WRITERS  OF 

written  chiefly  by  himself,  but  with  the 
true  magazine  flavor."  Willis  had  been 
less  than  two  years  out  of  college  and 
was  without  means  or  experience,  and 
his  enterprise  had  a  fine  air  of  audacity. 
Events  showed  that  as  a  venture  it  was 
magnificent,  but  it  was  not  war !  At  the 
end  of  two  years  the  magazine  was 
moved  to  New  York  and  merged  in 
"The  Mirror,"  a  journal  founded  in 
1823  by  George  P.  Morris  and  Samuel 
Woodworth ;  was  published  every  Satur- 
day ;  and  had  a  long  and  vigorous  life 
under  a  succession  of  names.  Wood- 
worth,  who  wrote  a  song  which  was 
sung  at  supper-tables  many  years 
afterward— "The  Old  Oaken  Bucket" 
— inspired,  it  is  said,  by  a  eulogy  on 
spring  water  pronounced  at  a  wine 
party  at  Mallory's,  a  popular  hotel  of 
the  time, — had  withdrawn  from  "The 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  91 

Mirror"  before  Willis  joined  its  edi- 
torial staff ;  but  Willis  and  Morris  re- 
mained partners  and  devoted  friends  to 
the  end.  They  both  became  immensely 
popular — Willis  through  his  versatility 
and  sentiment,  Morris  through  a  series 
of  songs  which  went  to  the  hearts  of  a 
host  of  people:  "Woodman,  Spare  that 
Tree,"  "Near  the  Lake  where  droops 
the  Lily,"  and  "My  Mother's  Bible." 
He  was  one  of  the  earliest  collators  of 
literature  for  general  reading,  and  his 
"Song  Writers  of  America"  and  "The 
Prose  and  Poetry  of  America" — the 
latter  edited  in  collaboration  with  Wil- 
lis— were  eminently  useful  compilations. 
He  had  the  rare  good  luck  to  write  a 
successful  play  founded  on  Revolution- 
ary events,  and  a  libretto  for  an  opera ; 
but  his  talent  and  fortune  lay  in  his  skill 
in  giving  popular  sentiment  expression 


92  THE  WRITERS  OF 

in  songs.  General  Wilson  records,  as 
the  most  impressive  evidence  of  his  pop- 
ularity, that  he  could  at  any  time  ex- 
change an  unread  song  for  a  check  for 
fifty  dollars.  Genial  in  manner  and 
with  an  agreeable  address,  Morris  was 
also  a  shrewd  man  of  affairs. 

A  vigorous,  burly  man,  often  met  on 
the  streets  in  the  second  decade,  was  on 
his  way  to  become  one  of  the  most  widely 
known  Americans,  whose  name  is  now  fa- 
miliar throughout  Europe.  "The  Spy" 
appeared  in  1821,  and  a  few  months 
later  passed  into  a  second  edition  and 
was  dramatized.  In  the  following  year  it 
was  published  in  England,  and  the  Eng- 
lish newspapers  began  to  speak  of  its 
author  as  a  "distinguished  American 
novelist."  The  story  speedily  became 
the  foundation  for  a  world-wide  literary 
reputation  which  has  suffered  little  at 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  93 

the  hands  of  time;  the  boys  in  small 
German  towns  still  organize  themselves 
into  tribes  of  "Cooper  Indians"  and  per- 
form heroic  feats  after  the  manner  of 
the  "Leather-Stocking  Tales,"  which 
confirmed  and  broadened  the  fame  es- 
tablished by  "The  Spy." 

James  Fenimore  Cooper  was  not 
born  in  New  York  and  did  not  share  the 
Knickerbocker  tradition,  but  between 
1822,  when  he  became  a  resident  of  the 
metropolis,  and  1826,  when  he  went  to 
Europe  for  a  stay  of  seven  years,  he 
wrote  three  of  the  most  notable  of  his 
novels.  "The  Pioneers"  was  published 
in  1823,  "The  Pilot"  in  1824,  "The 
Last  of  the  Mohicans"  in  1826. 
"Lionel  Lincoln,"  which  saw  the  light 
in  1825,  is  negligible,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  literature.  In  1823  Cooper  was 
living  in  Beach  Street ;  after  his  return 


94  THE  WRITERS  OF 

from  Europe  in  1833,  he  spent  a  few 
winters  in  the  city,  but  his  home  was  in 
Coopers  town. 

Cooper's  reputation,  vigorous  intel- 
lect, and  courage  of  speech  made  for  him 
warm  friends  as  well  as  bitter  enemies, 
though  the  latter  were  of  the  period 
after  his  return  from  Europe,  when  his 
sharp  criticism  of  American  manners 
and  his  impatience  with  provincial 
standards  involved  him  in  long-con- 
tinued and  unhappy  controversy.  "The 
Bread  and  Cheese  Club,"  of  which  he 
was  the  founder,  included  in  its  member- 
ship men  of  more  than  local  reputation  : 
Kent,  Bryant,  Morse,  Halleck. 

A  few  days  before  he  sailed  for  Eu- 
rope in  1826,  the  Club  gave  Cooper  a 
dinner  at  the  City  Hotel,  at  which 
Chancellor  Kent  presided,  and  speeches 
were  made  by  Governor  Clinton,  Gen- 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  95 

eral  Scott,  and  other  well-known  men, 
who  spoke  in  enthusiastic  terms  of  the 
distinction  he  had  brought  to  the  coun- 
try and  the  city.  Chancellor  Kent 
hailed  his  "genius,  which  has  rendered 
our  native  soil  classic  ground,  and  given 
to  our  early  history  the  enchantment  of 
fiction." 

The  high  regard  in  which  Cooper  was 
held  by  the  men  of  Letters  in  New 
York,  and  the  relative  positions  of  the 
American  poets  of  the  day  in  the  order 
of  merit,  are  reflected  in  Halleck's  re- 
mark to  General  Wilson :  "Cooper  is 
colonel  of  the  literary  regiment ;  Irving, 
lieutenant-colonel;  Bryant,  the  major; 
while  Longfellow,  Whittier,  Holmes, 
Dana,  and  myself  may  be  considered 
captains."  In  popular  reputation  the 
place  assigned  to  Cooper  was  not  too 
high,  although  Halleck  put  himself  too 


96  THE  WRITERS  OF 

complacently  in  the  rank  of  Holmes 
and  Whittier.  After  his  return  from 
Europe  in  1833,  Cooper  spent  only  a 
few  winters  in  New  York;  but  the  city 
in  which  his  reputation  was  born,  so  to 
speak,  and  in  which  his  literary  friend- 
ships were  formed  was  the  scene  of  the 
most  impressive  commemoration  of  his 
life  and  fame.  A  few  months  after  his 
death  a  memorial  meeting  brought  to- 
gether probably  the  most  distinguished 
group  of  men  who  had  appeared  at  one 
time  in  the  history  of  the  city.  Webster 
presided  with  his  accustomed  dignity, 
but  spoke  without  his  occasional  in- 
spiration ;  while  Bryant  rose  easily  to 
the  highest  reach  of  his  theme  in  an  ad- 
dress of  great  beauty  and  feeling. 

William  Cullen  Bryant  came  to  the 
city  in  1825  still  thinking  of  himself  as 
a  lawyer  with  a  strong  bent  toward 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  97 

literature,  but  not  yet  fully  committed 
to  a  change  of  profession.  A  year 
earlier  he  had  made  a  flying  visit  to  the 
city  and  been  warmly  welcomed  by 
Cooper,  Halleck,  the  Sedgwicks,  and 
other  well-known  people.  The  appear- 
ance of  "Thanatopsis"  in  1817,  and  of 
the  memorable  "Lines  to  a  Waterfowl" 
a  year  later,  had  put  his  reputation  as 
a  poet  on  a  basis  so  solid  that,  while  it 
was  greatly  broadened  as  time  went  on, 
it  did  not  need  to  be  strengthened.  In 
June,  1825,  his  name  appeared  as  editor 
on  the  title-page  of  the  "New  York  Re- 
view and  Athenaeum  Magazine."  Later 
in  the  year  he  read  four  lectures  before 
the  Athenaeum  Society;  and  two  years 
later,  under  the  auspices  of  the  recently 
established  National  Academy  of  De- 
sign, he  talked  so  well  about  certain 
phases  of  Mythology  that  he  was  asked 


98  THE  WRITERS  OP 

to  repeat  the  course  several  successive 
years.  In  1826  he  became  the  New  York 
editor  of  a  periodical  which  bore  the  por- 
tentous name  of  "The  New  York  Liter- 
ary Gazette  or  American  Athenaeum," 
at  a  salary  of  five  hundred  dollars  a 
year.  His  financial  position  was  pre- 
carious and  had  become  desperate  when 
he  was  invited  to  join  the  editorial  staff 
of  the  "New  York  Evening  Post,"  a 
journal  always  intimately  connected 
with  the  literary  history  of  the  city.  As 
a  by-product  of  his  industry,  Bryant 
contributed  editorial  suggestion  and 
writing  to  the  "Talisman,"  one  of  those 
old-fashioned  annuals  which  grew  like 
mushrooms  during  the  decade  which 
ended  in  1830.  In  the  closing  year  of 
that  decade,  having  acquired  an  inter- 
est in  the  "Evening  Post,"  he  wrote  to 
R.  H.  Dana  that  he  had  made  sure  of  a 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  99 

comfortable  livelihood:  "I  do  not  like 
politics  any  better  than  you  do ;  but 
they  get  only  my  mornings,  and  you 
know  politics  and  a  bellyful  are  better 
than  poetry  and  starvation."  Long 
after  the  Knickerbocker  era  had  become 
a  tradition,  Bryant  was  reaping  the 
double  reward  of  the  poet  and  journal- 
ist, and  enjoying  well-earned  prosperity 
of  hand  and  heart. 

Among  the  men  who  found  a  con- 
venient meeting-place  in  the  shop  of 
Charles  Wiley,  a  well-known  publisher 
of  the  Knickerbocker  period,  at  the  cor- 
ner of  Wall  and  New  Streets,  was  Rich- 
ard Henry  Dana,  whose  "Two  Years 
Before  the  Mast"  has  been  thumbed 
by  many  generations  of  American  boys. 
A  Cambridge  man,  with  a  Harvard  edu- 
cation, Dana  breathed  another  air  than 
that  of  the  metropolis ;  but  for  many 


100  THE  WRITERS  OP 

years  his  was  a  familiar  figure  in  the 
places  where  men  of  literary  habit  gath- 
ered in  New  York.  In  the  back  room 
of  Wiley's  shop,  familiarly  known  as  the 
"Den,"  Dana  met  Cooper,  Halleck,  Bre- 
voort,  and  a  genial  company  who  found 
pleasure  in  Cooper's  somewhat  pessimis- 
tic talk.  It  was  on  Broadway,  Gen- 
eral Wilson  tells  us,  that  the  mod- 
est author  of  "The  Idle  Man"  was 
almost  assaulted  by  an  enthusiastic  ad- 
mirer who  cried,  "Are  you  the  immortal 
Dana?"  lifted  the  astonished  man  in  his 
arms,  rushed  across  the  street  with  him, 
and  placed  him  triumphantly  on  his  own 
threshold;  the  author  meantime  calling 
out,  "Release  me  from  this  maniac!" 
Such  lively  demonstrations  of  admira- 
tion for  men  of  Letters  are  no  longer 
seen  on  Broadway ! 

Local  self-consciousness  was  already 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  101 

pronounced  in  the  foremost  towns  of 
the  country  in  the  third  decade  of  the 
Nineteenth  Century.  Boston,  New 
York,  Philadelphia,  were  in  the  race  for 
the  intellectual  primacy  of  the  New 
World,  and  Richmond  and  Charleston 
were  not  unmindful  of  their  claims  upon 
the  homage  of  the  nation.  Nearly  every 
State  cherished  the  belief  that  it  con- 
tained within  its  borders  a  modern 
Athens  which  could  bravely  invite  com- 
parison with  the  ancient  capital  of 
Attica.  In  1824  Boston  was  spoken  of 
as  "The  Literary  Emporium,"  a  de- 
scription which  had,  unhappily,  a  sug- 
gestion of  trade  associations.  Three 
years  later,  Philadelphia,  according  to 
a  magazine  prospectus,  had  "within  her- 
self a  larger  fund  of  talent,  erudition, 
and  science — larger  perhaps  than  any 
other  city  can  boast."    New  York  was 


102  THE  WRITERS  OF 

not  lacking  in  the  audacity  which  is 
born  of  self-confidence.  In  1820  an  at- 
tempt was  made  to  establish  in  the 
Knickerbocker  town  an  "American 
Academy  of  Languages  and  Belles-Let- 
tres,"  which  boldly  set  out  to  protect  the 
language  from  "local  and  foreign  cor- 
ruptions," and  to  establish  a  "standard 
of  writing  and  pronunciation,  correct, 
fixed,  and  uniform,  throughout  our 
extensive  territory."  To  allay  the  ap- 
prehensions of  the  Old  World,  it  was 
announced  that  no  effort  would  be  made 
"to  form  an  American  language."  It  is 
painful  to  record  the  fact  that  this 
modest  effort  to  guard  the  mother 
tongue  aroused  local  jealousy  and  per- 
ished at  birth.    Boston  derided  it! 

But  if  New  York  failed  to  make  itself 
the  seat  of  an  academy,  it  did  not  fail 
to  foster  the  infant  industry  of  journal- 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  103 

ism.  Professor  Cairns  enumerates  no 
less  than  thirty  periodicals  of  various 
kinds  established  in  the  city  between 
1816  and  1833.  These  were  all  modest 
enterprises,  and  of  brief  and  varied 
careers.  The  scale  of  expenditure  must 
fill  the  editors  of  magazines  to-day  with 
bitter  regret  for  the  conditions  of  the 
good  old  times.  In  1822  the  publishers 
of  the  "Atlantic  Magazine,"  issued  in 
New  York,  paid  its  editor  five  hundred 
dollars  a  year,  and  authorized  an  expen- 
diture of  the  same  amount  for  the  con- 
duct of  the  magazine ! 

There  were  many  lesser  writers  and 
men  of  cultivated  taste  in  literature  and 
art  in  the  closing  years  of  the  Knicker- 
bocker period,  who  formed  a  congenial 
society  in  the  growing  city,  and,  in 
some  cases,  made  important  contribu- 
tions to  the  scholarship  of  their  time 


104  THE  WRITERS  OF 

and  secured  local  reputation  and  influ- 
ence. 

Gulian  Crommelin  Verplanck  was  a 
fine  type  of  the  old-time  gentleman  of 
colonial  descent.  After  his  graduation 
from  Columbia  College  he  studied  law, 
made  the  "grand  tour,"  which  was  not 
only  a  part  of  a  liberal  education  in 
those  days  but  an  enterprise  of  an  ad- 
venturous character,  returned  to  become 
a  dignified  professor  in  what  is  now  the 
General  Theological  Seminary,  spent 
eight  years  in  Congress,  and  for  nearly 
fifty  years  was  Vice-Chancellor  of  the 
State  University.  He  had  a  happy 
faculty  of  dignified  address  on  public 
occasions,  was  a  contributor  to  the 
"Talisman"  with  Bryant,  edited  an  il- 
lustrated edition  of  Shakespeare,  and 
appears  to  have  been  regarded  by  the 
gay  spirits  of  Cockloft  Hall  as  a  per- 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  105 

son  not  quite  of  their  kind.  Older  men, 
however,  held  him  in  great  esteem, 
Bryant  reports,  as  "an  example  of 
steady,  studious,  and  spotless  youth." 
His  protest  against  Irving's  presenta- 
tion of  the  founders  of  Manhattan  would 
seem  to  indicate  that  his  sense  of  humor 
was  not  always  keen. 

Frederick  S.  Cozzens,  whose  "Spar- 
rowgrass  Papers"  later  achieved  a  bril- 
liant local  reputation,  has  left  a 
characterization  of  Dr.  John  Wakefield 
Francis,  a  physician  of  considerable 
professional  distinction,  strong  literary 
interests,  and  much  given  to  hospitality, 
which  stands  in  no  need  of  amplifica- 
tion: "The  Doctor  is  one  of  our  old 
Knickerbockers.  His  big,  bushy  head 
is  as  familiar  as  the  City  Hall.  He  be- 
longs to  the  'God  bless  you,  my  dear 
young  friend'  school.    He  is  as  full  of 


106  THE  WRITERS  OF 

knowledge  as  an  egg  is  full  of  meat.  He 
knows  more  about  China  than  the  Em- 
peror of  the  Celestial  Empire." 

A  fleeting  figure  in  the  Knickerbocker 
town  was  the  author  of  "Home,  Sweet 
Home,"  a  song  of  such  popularity  that 
Foster's  songs  are  its  only  rivals.  It 
was  one  of  the  ironies  of  life  that  John 
Howard  Payne  should  spend  his  days 
in  exile  and  die  beyond  the  seas.  He 
was  born  at  No.  S3  Pearl  Street  in 
1791,  became  a  clerk  in  a  counting- 
room  at  fourteen,  and  a  semi-profes- 
sional editor  while  in  his  teens ;  though 
his  connection  with  the  "Thespian 
Mirror,"  a  local  journal  devoted  to  the 
drama,  was  kept  secret.  He  spent  two 
terms  in  Union  College,  but  the  stage 
was  calling  him,  and  in  1809 — a  year 
memorable  for  the  extraordinary  num- 
ber of  men  of  genius  it  brought  to  birth 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  107 

— he  played  the  once  popular  part  of 
Young  Norval  on  the  boards  of  the 
Park  Theatre.  Three  years  later  he  was 
playing  with  moderate  success  in  Eng- 
lish theatres,  and  a  little  later  adapting 
and  writing  plays  in  Paris,  drawing  his 
material  chiefly  from  French  sources. 
The  song  which  was  to  give  him  a  world- 
wide reputation  was  written  in  a  room 
in  the  Palais  Royal  for  his  play,  "Clari ; 
or,  The  Maid  of  Milan."  He  died  at 
Tunis  in  1852,  and  thirty  years  later 
"Home,  Sweet  Home"  was  sung  by  a 
host  of  people  gathered  in  Washington 
about  the  grave  in  which  his  body  was 
reinterred.  Payne  had  talents  of  an 
uncommon  order;  men  of  the  quality 
and  distinction  of  Talma,  Coleridge, 
and  Lamb  were  warmly  attached  to  him ; 
his  work  was  rewarded  with  generous 
returns  in  money ;  but  he  was  always  in 


108  THE  WRITERS  OF 

financial  straits  and  seems  to  have 
lacked  the  happy  faculty  of  making 
himself  at  home  in  the  world. 

Other  men  less  fugitive  than  Payne, 
though  of  purely  local  fame,  contrib- 
uted to  the  good-fellowship  of  the  later 
Knickerbocker  period.  Charles  P. 
Clinch  wrote  plays,  poems,  and  criti- 
cisms ;  held  public  office ;  and  became  the 
devoted  friend  of  Halleck  and  Drake. 
"The  Spy,"  "The  First  of  May,"  "The 
Expelled  Collegians,"  and  an  address 
prepared  for  the  opening  of  the  Park 
Theatre,  testify  to  his  industry,  but 
failed  to  give  his  reputation  more  than 
local  and  passing  importance. 

The  informal  fellowship  of  the  early 
Knickerbockers  gave  way  to  the  earliest 
literary  and  artistic  clubs.  Of  one  of  the 
earliest  of  these  Robert  Charles  Sands 
was  a  member.     The  "Sketch  Club" 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  109 

included  Bryant,  Halleck,  Verplanck, 
Cole,  Ingham,  Durand,  Weir,  and  other 
practitioners  of  the  arts.  The  "Century 
Association,"  which  has  been  intimately 
associated  with  the  literary,  artistic, 
and  professional  life  of  New  York,  was 
organized  at  a  meeting  of  the  "Sketch 
Club"  in  1847.  Sands  was  a  poet  and 
journalist,  a  warm-hearted,  kindly 
humorist.  A  more  vigorous  person- 
ality was  William  Leggett,  who  began 
his  professional  life  in  the  navy,  while 
still  a  young  man  published  a  volume 
of  poems  in  New  York,  wrote  with  great 
ardor  for  the  periodicals  of  the  day, 
and  finally  became  one  of  the  editors 
of  the  "Evening  Post."  He  was  a 
man  of  the  old-time  belligerent  type, 
and  fought  a  duel  of  much  local  notori- 
ety at  Weehawken,  where  the  most  fa- 
mous and  tragic  duel  ever  fought  on 


110 


THE  WRITERS  OF 


American  soil  had  taken  place  in 
1804. 

The  most  popular  member  of  the 
later  Knickerbocker  group  was  Charles 
Fenno  Hoffman,  who  had  a  happy  fac- 
ulty of  song  and  verse  writing.  The 
lasting  popularity  of  "Sparkling  and 
Bright"  needs  no  explanation ;  while  the 
verses  on  the  battle  of  Monterey  have  a 
ring  of  genuine  emotion  and  a  force  of 
spirited  action  which  carry  them  in 
spite  of  awkward  lines : 

We  were  not  many — we  who  stood 

Before  the  iron  sleet  that  day; 
Yet  many  a  gallant  spirit  would 
Give  half  his  years  if  but  he  could 
Have  been  with  us  at  Monterey. 

Hoffman  was  connected  editorially  with 
the  "New  York  American"  and  was  one 
of  the  founders  of  the  "Knickerbocker 
Magazine,"  which  was  born  in  the  after- 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  111 

glow  of  the  Knickerbocker  period  and 
continued  the  Knickerbocker  tradition, 
though  its  scope  gave  it  national  im- 
portance. His  editorial  duties  left 
Hoffman  an  ample  margin  of  time  for 
lyrical  work,  and  his  short  poems  of 
singing  quality,  "The  Myrtle  and 
Steel,"  "Room,  Boys,  Room,"  " 'Tis 
Hard  to  Share  her  Smiles  with  Many," 
were  sung,  hummed,  and  whistled  in 
many  parts  of  the  country.  His  "Win- 
ter in  the  West,"  made  up  of  a  series  of 
letters,  was  one  of  the  early  reports  of 
adventure  and  incident  on  the  frontier. 

Albany  was,  after  New  York,  the 
chief  centre  of  the  Dutch  tradition,  and 
had  a  very  hospitable  and  delightful  so- 
ciety intimately  connected  with  its  kin 
city  at  the  mouth  of  the  Hudson.  From 
Albany,  at  short  intervals,  came  Alfred 
Billings  Street.   He  was  always  welcome 


112  THE  WRITERS  OF 

in  New  York,  where  his  somewhat  pro- 
lific verse  was  held  in  great  esteem.  He 
was  a  devout  student  of  Nature,  and 
had  a  happy  command  of  the  descrip- 
tive phrase,  and  his  contemporaries 
among  the  American  poets  were  gener- 
ous in  their  estimates  of  the  excellence 
of  his  poetry.  Longfellow  gave  him  the 
first  place  as  a  reporter  of  forest  scen- 
ery, and  Bryant  was  "impressed  with 
the  fidelity  and  vividness  of  the  images 
newly  drawn  from  Nature." 

Among  the  scholarly  writers  of  the 
later  time  was  Henry  Theodore  Tucker- 
man,  whose  name  has  a  colonial  flavor 
in  the  mind  of  the  New  Yorker  of  to-day. 
He  brought  the  name  here  from  Boston 
in  the  afterglow  of  the  Knickerbocker 
age,  spent  many  years  in  Europe,  and 
became  the  most  accomplished  of  the 
early  American  writers  in  the  field  of 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  113 

art.  He  was  a  man  of  wide  reading,  with 
a  charm  of  manner  which  won  him  an 
enviable  popularity  in  the  social  life  of 
New  York  and  Newport,  and  with  the 
catholicity  of  interests  and  tastes  which 
mark  the  cosmopolitan  temper.  Evert 
Augustus  Duyckinck,  on  the  other 
hand,  was  a  son  of  the  soil  and  an  in- 
heritor of  the  tradition,  though  he  was 
born  too  late  to  be  counted  among  the 
Knickerbocker  writers.  In  1830,  when 
the  Knickerbocker  age  reached  its  end 
and  the  mid-century  writers  began  to 
appear,  Duyckinck  was  preparing  for 
Columbia  College,  and  it  was  not  until 
1840,  on  his  return  from  an  extended 
visit  in  Europe,  that  he  began  a  long 
and  industrious  career  as  an  editor  and 
writer.  His  chief  claim  on  the  attention 
of  lovers  of  old  New  York  rests  on  his 
service  as  a  literary  historian.  His 


114  THE  WRITERS  OF 

"Cyclopaedia  of  American  Literature," 
his  text  for  the  "National  Portrait  Gal- 
lery of  Eminent  Americans,"  and  his 
"Memorial  of  Fitz-Greene  Halleck"  are 
valuable  records  of  the  early  men  of 
Letters  in  this  country,  with  many  of 
whom  he  was  personally  associated. 

Edgar  Allan  Poe  came  to  New  York 
in  the  later  Thirties,  and  made  and  lost 
friends  as  in  every  place  where  he  tried, 
with  pathetic  hopefulness,  to  find  an- 
chorage. His  attitude  toward  the 
Knickerbocker  group  was  one  of  mingled 
condescension  and  contempt.  In  any 
society  he  would  have  been  a  detached 
and  lonely  figure,  and  the  lasting  me- 
morial of  his  ill-starred  genius  and 
broken  career  in  New  York  is  the  cot- 
tage at  Fordham  in  which  Virginia  Ppe 
died. 

These  variously  gifted  men  found  the 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  115 

remuneration  of  literary  work  far  too 
meagre  for  "human  nature's  daily 
food,"  and  took  refuge  in  business  oc- 
cupations of  various  kinds.  Halleck 
was  an  expert  accountant  fortunate  in 
his  connection  with  Mr.  Astor,  while 
Drake  studied  medicine  and,  after  the 
custom  of  many  old-time  physicians, 
had  an  interest  in  a  drug-store.  Clinch 
was  in  the  employment  of  a  ship-builder, 
and  for  nearly  two  generations  was 
Deputy  Collector  of  the  Port  of  New 
York ;  Payne  began  his  career  as  a 
clerk ;  and  Sprague  was  a  bank  cashier. 
Irving  and  Cooper  were  amply  rewarded 
by  a  public  to  which  they  offered  the 
novelty  of  original  American  literature ; 
Bryant  found  ease  and  a  comfortable 
fortune  in  journalism.  In  1822,  Pro- 
fessor Cairns  reminds  us,  he  set  a  price 
on  his  shorter  poems  which  could  hardly 


1 1  6  THE  WRITERS  OF 

be  regarded  as  exorbitant — two  dollars 
each.  George  P.  Morris  was  more  for- 
tunate so  far  as  income  was  concerned, 
and  reached  such  an  altitude  of  popu- 
larity that  he  could  sell  a  song  unread 
for  fifty  dollars,  while  a  very  unimpor- 
tant drama  from  his  hand  brought  him 
thirty-five  hundred  dollars.  Then,  as 
now,  journalism  was  a  refuge  from 
the  inadequate  rewards  of  literature ; 
though  it  must  be  frankly  conceded 
that,  while  much  of  the  work  of  the 
lesser  Knickerbocker  writing  had  a 
pleasant  humor,  a  delightful  gaiety  of 
mood  or  lightness  of  style,  it  was  neither 
vital  nor  original,  and  its  appeal  was 
limited  to  a  small  group  of  readers. 

In  the  later  years  of  his  life,  Irving 
was  in  the  habit  of  speaking  of  "Salma- 
gundi" as  light  and  trivial ;  an  overflow 
of  youthful  fun  and  audacity.  Mr. 


KNICKERBOCKER  XEW  YORK  117 

Barrett  Wendell  is  of  opinion  that  the 
"literature  of  Brockden  Brown,  of 
Irving,  of  Cooper,  and  of  Poe  is  only  a 
literature  of  pleasure,  possessing,  so  far 
as  it  has  excellence  at  all,  only  the  ex- 
cellence of  conscientious  refinement" ; 
and  that  nothing  in  it  "touched  seri- 
ously on  either  God's  eternities,  or  the 
practical  conduct  of  life  in  the  United 
States."  This  is  an  incidentally  happy 
characterization  of  the  Knickerbocker 
literature :  it  was  a  literature  of  pleas- 
ure, and  it  was  delightfully  free  from 
the  didactic  and  sermonic  note  at  a  time 
when,  Lowell  declared,  all  New  England 
was  a  pulpit.  Its  touch  on  morals  and 
manners  was  light,  satiric,  and  amus- 
ing; in  its  way  it  had  the  tone  of  the 
world  of  society  rather  than  of  theology 
or  reform.  Its  preaching,  like  that  of 
Addison  and  Steele,  was  lightly  winged 


118  THE  WRITERS  OF 

and  phrased  in  the  language  of  an  easy, 
cordial  society ;  tolerant  in  opinion,  hos- 
pitable to  differences  of  religion  and 
political  habit,  concerned  chiefly  to 
make  itself  agreeable  and  the  time  of  its 
sojourn  in  the  vale  of  tears  pleasantly 
profitable.  New  York  was  not  indiffer- 
ent to  the  religious  side  of  life,  but  its 
preaching  was  reserved  for  churches ;  its 
literature,  though  somewhat  provincial 
in  time  and  manner,  was  kept  well  within 
the  ancient  province  of  art. 

In  1858  the  twenty-fifth  anniversary 
of  the  founding  of  "The  Knickerbocker 
Magazine"  was  commemorated  by  the 
publication  of  "The  Knickerbocker 
Gallery,"  a  volume  of  portentous  size 
and  effusive  elegance,  made  up  of  ar- 
ticles written  by  contributors  to  the 
magazine.  Fifty-four  men  are  repre- 
sented in  the  collection,  of  whom  only 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  119 

four  belonged  to  the  early  and  charac- 
teristic Knickerbocker  period.  Irving 
drew  upon  a  commonplace-book  of  a 
date  thirty-five  years  earlier  for  a  few 
notes ;  Bryant  and  Halleck  were  among 
the  poets  of  the  collection;  John  W. 
Francis  and  Alfred  B.  Street  were  fa- 
miliar names  to  the  old  New  Yorkers  of 
that  day.  A  new  generation  was  in  pos- 
session of  the  stage,  however;  and  the 
Old  Town,  with  its  Dutch  traditions, 
was  slowly  losing  its  outlines  in  the 
neighborly  city  of  the  years  between 
1830  and  1880,  as  that  in  turn  is  fast 
being  obliterated  by  the  cosmopolitan 
city  of  to-day. 

The  old  places  have  vanished,  and  the 
old  faces  are  remembered  to-day  only  by 
the  aid  of  a  few  portraits.  The  names 
of  the  streets  in  the  lower  section  of  the 
modern  city  recall  men  and  women 


120  THE  WRITERS  OF 

whose  genial  hospitality  set  a  fashion 
which  has  never  gone  out  in  New  York, 
though  the  guests  of  the  city  have  be- 
come so  many  that  hotels  of  imposing 
size  and  oppressive  splendor  are  taxed 
to  provide  them  shelter.  But  behind  the 
tumult  of  the  great  tides  of  life  which 
flow  through  the  thoroughfares  there  is 
a  silent  New  York,  which  is  unspoiled 
by  the  possession  of  wealth,  and  which 
hears  the  appeals  of  the  unfortunate 
within  its  borders,  and  gives  time  and 
work  and  money  with  tireless  generosity 
of  heart  and  hand. 

There  was  a  charm  about  the  Old 
Town  which  depended  largely  on  neigh- 
borliness  and  the  narrower  interests 
which  thrive  in  a  small  and  homogeneous 
community;  the  charm  of  ease  and  of 
leisure  and  a  certain  contentment  with 
life;  of  the  ripeness  of  temper  and  of 


KNICKERBOCKER  NEW  YORK  121 

mind  which  is  the  fine  flowering  of  an 
education  based  on  the  humanities ;  of 
room  for  work  and  pleasure  large  enough 
for  fame,  but  not  too  large  for  the  nearer 
satisfactions  of  local  celebrity.  It  was 
the  good  fortune  of  the  early  Knicker- 
bocker writers,  by  temperament  and 
taste,  instinctively  to  adapt  their  gifts 
to  their  time  and  Town ;  and  it  was  the 
good  fortune  of  the  Town  to  be  the 
birthplace  of  American  literature,  and 
the  home  of  two  writers  who  were  first 
to  give  that  literature  a  place  in  the  in- 
terest of  the  world. 


